Home, Sweet Home

Your budding ecologists will enjoy the projects below that illustrate the importance of a single tree such as the baobab. They will easily grasp concepts such as habitat and the food chain.

Create a Huge Baobab Tree

1. First have a group of students make the trunk. It could be available during center/group time. The tree trunk could be created with torn paper, bark, cork, and paint.
2. Each student makes one crazily shaped branch. (Think big.) The branches are put together to create the tree.
3. Make a master list of all living things and other life forms that are dependent of the tree for food and shelter.
4. Students choose one to illustrate. Paste Styrofoam packaging pieces to the backs of their illustrations. Let dry. Then paste on to the tree. This will make the mural more 3-dimensional.
5. Students write a statement to post around the tree. "This is a fruit bat. Fruit bats love to drink the flower nectar." You can use string to connect the students drawings to their short information pieces.
6. Have students think of an appropriate title for their mural.

Other Possible Formats

• Im An Actor: The above mural could also be further developed into a super easy play. Have the students draw their selected life form onto a large paper plate. (This could be homework for the evening.) Glue a craft stick to the paper plate. Students now have masks. They can write what they are to say on the backs of the paper plates. "I am a fruit bat. I love to drink flower nectar." The fruit bat can then fly over to the flower and pretend to drink nectar. Students can present their play to other classes.
• Whose Tree Are You Anyway?: Each student makes a flip-flap book. A 9" x 12" paper is folded in half lengthwise. Students open the sheet of paper and cut three equal size flaps, four inches apart, to the center-fold. (This is a good time to pull out those rulers.) On the outside of the first flap the students write "Whose tree are you anyway?" They then choose three animals. Their names are written on the outside flaps, one on each flap. The students then illustrate the animal on the inside corresponding flap.