How to Teach a Toddler About Trees

During the midterm break I’ve been taking the boys out because of the glorious weather.    And since whenever we’re out, Mavi would climb the trees (and Vito would do the same), I took the chance to formally introduce Vito to trees.  Since he’s able to say words straight and could grasp simple concept, it’s about time I show him the wonders of trees!

The BEST way to learn about trees is to have a personal encounter with it.  And since we’re surround by them, we explored trees’ by climbing, touching and feeling their barks, observing the leaves colors, compare sizes and more. 

For Vito though, trees are something that he can climb on.  Whenever he sees a tree, he would just insist to climb onto it, like the picture below.  He was just in that position for about 30 minutes, not complaining and enjoying every single moment of it.

 

With these, I can conclude that Vito can somehow understand now that trees :

• have leaves
• have rough barks
• comes in big and small sizes
• are something we can play with

Now, for extensions,  I also prepared simple tree-themed activities for Vito at home for indoor play and learning.  Here are the trays I prepared for him:

Counting Trees.  Vito loves this! I stamped four dots in the paper with a number symbol and we count as we place a tree on each dot.  I used a do-a-dot marker for this.

Matching Trees (Abstract-Abstract).  Remember when we worked on leaves and he’s not interested in matching cards at all?  Well, that changed now as he was able to work on our matching tree cards without hesitation!  And yes he completed the four pairs with much concentration. I love it!  You can get these beautiful cards from here or click the image below.

Tree Puzzle.  He loves working on tree puzzle but somehow, our tree puzzle is still too complicated for his age.  He knows where to place the roots and trunk as of the moment, but finds it hard to fit them in the puzzle board.  So what I do is just ask him where the piece is supposed to go, he points and I do the fitting.

Tree Matching.  Similar matching activity as above, but in this case we are using a tree figure and matching it to cards.  We are doing lots of matching activities as this introduces early math concepts and object discrimination.  Tree figures are from Safari Toobs.

Books.  These are the books that we focused on during the week of our tree themed activities: Chicka Chicka Boom Boom and The Acorn’s Story, both of which are so enjoyable to read!

And how long do we have this for a theme? Mostly for 7-10 days!  Of course, these are just some of the thing he does, he also plays with his toy and read book, learn letters and numbers.  It’s just that I love introducing new concept/s each week and in a way its easier for me to focus on just one or two things.

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