Are Trees Alive?: A Mini Inquiry

How Our Tree Inquiry Began

Taking a Tree Walk

Investigating Tree Parts

The next day, I brought in some tree artifacts and challenged the children to look for any evidence that might help them answer our inquiry question.

The children made many concrete observations, but their thinking really took a turn when one student shared that the branch he was holding didn’t start out that way and that it had to grow to get that big.

Though this discovery, they began to see that living things grow and change.

Some children noticed and commented on the “swirls”  found on a tree slice.

We gathered on the carpet to look at the tree rings on a mat we had in our classroom.  I shared that these rings were evidence of tree growth and each ring represents one year in a tree’s life.

We counted the rings to see how old the tree would have been if it were real.

They also noticed the cracks in the tree and wondered about those.  We read Our Tree Named Steve by Alan Zweibel and learned how trees can be damaged over time.

Going Back to the Book

Eventually, we made our way back to the book that inspired our tree inquiry and went beyond the cover to read the book. It doesn’t directly answer the question, but invites readers to compare their own bodies to trees to show similarities and differences between these two living things.

I then played the song, I’m a Tree by Bev Bos, which is sadly unavailable, that invited children to move like a tree. But here’s a great tree meditation that could also be used.

Building Our Own Tree

From there we broke into 4 small groups to create a life-size tree.  Each group worked together to create a different tree part (i.e. trunk, roots, branches, leaves).

We then put our tree parts together and labeled the tree outside our classroom.

Returning to the Question That Launched Our Tree Inquiry

I then asked children to respond once again to the question, “Are Trees Alive?” to see how their thinking had changed. It was easy to see that our experiences had changed some children’s thinking and they now understood that trees were living things that grew and changed, just like them.

We also learned that some of the tree parts that we brought into the classroom were, “once living,” rather than living vs. nonliving, and this was an important distinction that contributed to their understanding.

We could have done more with this mini tree inquiry, but we ran out of time. In my notes, I wrote down that there were some great connections made between trees and breathing that could have been explored further.  Never enough time in the kindergarten day or year!

Try a Tree Inquiry!

Launch your own tree inquiry by posing the question, Are Trees Alive? to your students. Use these free printables to document their thinking at the beginning and end of your inquiry, and the tree observation form included to write about a tree found on your school grounds.

You might also enjoy the Tree Investigation Bundle that includes a complete before, during, and after plan for the Tree Walk as well as My Tree and Me, which shows you how to adopt a class tree to visit and observe across the seasons, so children can draw and compare seasonal changes.

For more science and inquiry ideas, visit the Growing with STEAM page found inside the Roots & Wings Resource Library.