Plant A Tree

Let your children assist you in planting a tree on the
 playground or near your classroom. Get permission first!

Get donations from parents and buy a tree and plant it in your classes name,
have everyone present and each participate in digging the hole or watering
it. Do this each year and you will soon have a forest of your own!

~or~

Find an area filled with seedlings.  Get permission for the children
 to dig up some of them for this activity.  Explain to the children that
 we need trees to clean our air.  The trees take in the carbon dioxide
 we breathe out and they produce the oxygen that we breathe in.  Then
 take the children to the place that has the tree seedlings.  Give them
 each a tin can.  Ask them to find a seedling that they would like to
 take home and plant.  Let them use spades to carefully dig up their
 seedlings and put them in their tin cans.  The seedlings will take a long
 time to grow, but someday they will be tall trees that take in lots of oxygen.

Tiny Trees

So you want to climb a tree -
and need one that's very small,
find a twig to plant in clay
'cause it wont grow at all!

Put some glue in the bottom of an egg carton. Put clay on top of glue.
then let glue dry. Stick twigs into the clay/play dough.

You can add leaves that are cut out of construction paper.
You can pull apart cotton balls and place over twig for snow.

Special Visitor

Arrange for a forester to stop by for a visit.

"Tree"-mendous Arbor Day

By planting and caring for trees we insure our own survival and our future. 
Julius Sterling Morton helped establish a holiday to remind us to plant
and care for our trees.  He started the first official Arbor Day in Nebraska
 on April 10, 1872.  The movement grew, and Arbor Day became
 a legal holiday in many other states. 

Trees clean the air, return water moisture to the atmosphere,
 provide food and materials for much of the world. 

Arbor Day is a time to plant, study, and appreciate
 the beauty and usefulness of the trees.

Adopt a Tree (I)

Adopt a tree and observe throughout the year. Remember to take photos and
write class stories about it. Measure it's width and guess it's height (unless your
class is a lot older and can figure it out by arithmetic) Maybe you could find
 an older class to measure it this way and then you can see how well you
estimated its height. Take rubbings of its bark, draw pictures of it and hug it.

Adopt a Tree (II)

When doing a Unit on Trees have your class go outside and adopt a tree.
Then you can take walks to the tree and do activities with the tree.
Some activities include:
Measuring how many children (with hands joined) it takes to go around the tree.
Talk about what animals could live in the tree
Draw pictures of the trees
Take pictures of the tree (monthly) so the children can see the tree change over time
In conjunction with the book A Tree Can Be,
 talk about what a tree can be to your students.
Talk into a tape recorder and describe what the tree looks like in a particular season.
Observe animals that live in or near the tree.
Pick up litter around the tree.
Play circle games, such as Rind Around the Rosie
 or Duck, Duck, Goose, around the tree.

Tree Booklet

*On this project I wound up using only one tree and
 having the children do all of the steps to the one tree. 

Recycling

This is a great theme to teach about the importance of recycling -
 it seems that there is a recipe somewhere out there that teaches
 how to take used newspaper and turn it into regular paper - but even
 if you didn't do that you could take the art project from that day and
 learn some origami or something along those lines just
 so that everything was used more than once.

Botanical Garden

Visit a botanical garden. Let them pickup parts of the tree off the
 ground to take back to do art projects with or to put in a sensory box.

Leaf-Word Matching

Collect five samples of different kinds of leaves. Mount each leaf on a piece
of lightweight cardboard, print its name on the cardboard and cover the
entire piece with clear self-stick paper. Make five corresponding word cards
by printing the name of each leaf on a separate card and covering it with
clear self-stick paper. Have the children match the word cards with the
corresponding leaf-and-word cards.

~ Links ~

National Arbor Day Foundation

The Treetures

Arbor Day Theme ideas from Step By Step Child Care

Arbor Day Crafts at Enchanted Learning

Tree Shape Printable at ABC Teach

Tree Clipart at ClipsAhoy

Arbor Day Ideas at Childfun

Arbor Day Arts & Crafts at First-School

Arbor Day Ideas at Perpetual Preschool

All About Arbor Day at Kids Domain

The Teachers Guide: Arbor Day Thematic Activities

Arbor Day Dates by State

Teaching Youth About Trees

Arbor Day at A to Z Teacher Stuff

Trees Unit at ABC Teach

Arbor Day Theme at Everything Preschool