British Columbia Trees

Tree life.

The reading from our book talks about how intelligent trees really are; they communicate with each other and give us a better, healthier existence.

If you are interested this website is very helpful. I happened to have the book in our school supplies so we didn't need the website. If you ever wanted to identify the tree this website has the trees name, leaf and how to identify also the pine cone and how to identify. Again the bark and the trees silhouette. Here is the book we used. Very helpful!

http://vancouverislandbigtrees.blogspot.ca/2010/12/arbutus-canadas-only-native-broad.html

We tried to find out what this tree was. It's not an evergreen because it has no leaves...yet!

Douglas Fir tree. We found this pine cone in the tree's bark and thought it might make a neat picture.

We found this pinecone in the yard and don't know what tree it came from.

Cedar bud

I know a lot about Cedar and how to identify them. So finding them was definitely easier than the other trees. I know a lot about the trees but I had a harder time identifying which tree was Red Cedar and which one was Yellow Cedar. For example this smaller tree down here I thought was Red Cedar. But what the book told me it was a young Yellow Cedar tree.

Yellow cedar

Me in the process of identifying this specific tree.

This is a leaf from the Red Cedar tree. 

We did find it on the ground, but we are pretty sure it is from the same tree.

This is the Red Cedar tree. We decided that putting the magnifying glass in front of  the tree would look interesting.   Plus then you could see the tree and it's bark easier.

Let's investigate a tree that you have in your yard!

Did you know:

Some herbal properties!

http://www.herbs2000.com/herbs/herbs_madrone.htm

http://honest-food.net/experiments-with-madrone-bark-tea/

Madrone Tea Eggs

What is a Madrone tree? A Madrone is actually an Arbutus tree. Which is it's genus name. 

Here is our tea....brewing. In China they take the tree's bark and steep it in boiling water.
Why do they do this? Well this a tradition in China and they actually put eggs in the tea.
Which makes the eggs a browny redish colour.

Another reason why we decide to make Madrone tea and do the eggs is because,
it is a traditional tea from British Columbia First Nations.
We also have been learning quite a bit about this..

 #1 the first step was to just boil the eggs for about 10 minutes.

#2  Then after the ten minutes we harvested the bark and put it in the water to steep. After about another 5 minutes we put the eggs in some cold water and waited another few minutes.

#3 After the cold water they were still warm but only warm to touch. So we cracked them and made different patterns. This was neat. You don't have to do that though. (fun and optional)

#4 Then we boiled them in the water for another 10 minutes.
Then again put them in cold water and crack open.
(One trick i like to use on boiled eggs is to roll them on a hard surface and then peel off the shell.)

Enjoy!

Tides

Tides

So when we went to this beach we hadn't really planned or looked at a tides chart. So the water was actually coming in and it is much more fun to explore when tide is out. This month Chrissy and I have learned about Tides and the Ocean.  The tide is caused by the position of the moon. So when the moon is farther away it makes low tide and when the moon is closer we get high tide. Can you guess how many High and Low tides are each day? There are two High tides and two Low tides. Each day there are 24 hours, and in the 24 hr there are 2 sets of high and low tide, 12 hr apart. There are different types of tides, They are all caused by the different positions of the moon as well. Here they are. Neap Tide, Spring Tide.

If you look closely in the distance there is a rock tower on a high part of this cliff into the water.

This is a closer picture to the tower.

This is showing the water pushing in and pulling out of the beach.

Oceans near me

What I know about beaches close to me

Here you can see the top part has sunlight and it is called the Sunlit Zone. It is the smallest zone but has the most plants and animals. The Twilight Zone has almost no sunlight and has less creatures, but is larger than the Sunlit Zone. Then the Midnight Zone. This zone has creatures we don't know about or very little know about them. In the Midnight Zone you can see there are clams and rocks on the bottom and vents from the earths core letting off steam and chemicals that the tube worms feed off of. Then there are a few jellies and fish. I didn't draw the Abyss Zone, because I didn't know about it till later. But very little is known about it and I don't know what kind of creatures live down there. Scientist are still trying to make machines and sub's to be able to safely dive to the very bottom of the ocean.

These two photos are of some seaweed we found. I thought it was interesting because it had holes in it with rocks stuck in the holes. Doesn't look neat?

We went to one of the beaches down the road from me, and found that the sand was not fine like all the other beaches. Normally you can't see the different individual pieces of rock. This sand you could actually see all the pebbles with your bare eyes.

At this beach there is a big cliff surrounding the whole beach. On the cliffs there are lots of trees and this is some really cool roots I found.

I am trying to make all the rocks balance and make a Inuksuit.
I found this challenging.

Trying to find flat rocks to make the Inuksuit.

Here is the finished product of our Inuksuit. I found some kelp roots and decided to make a head out of it!

Experiment #3

 Pop Bottle Salinity Experiment 

Salinity is how much salt is in the water.

Here you can see that there are two bottles. One has food colouring and salt, the other one has normal room temperature water.

In the photo above you can see that the bottle farther away has dark water. That is the bottle with the coloured salt water. The coloured salt water is slowly moving into the closest bottle. You can see that there is dark water on the top and the room temperature water on the top.

You can see the finished product of the Salinity Experiment. The Salt water and the room temperature water has now shared and is even, in both coloured water and room temperature water. But also in salinity.

 "Sharing is waters first prime directive"  Dr. Geo Dude...

#2 Temperature and Currents experiment

                        Temperature and Currents experiment

 

  Here you can see the that we are adding in more water    

because the water level in the cup dropped. Which made the coloured water drop and not pour out so     

Here you can see the that we are adding in more water  because the water level in the cup dropped. 

Which made the coloured water drop and not pour out so consistently.  

This is what happened after we added more water!   

                                                                                      

 

This video demonstrates how the cold water (blue) drops to the bottom of the room temperature water because it is denser than the room temperature water and the hot water. The cold water circles the entire box without rising to the top. The hot water (red) rises just below the surface and circles around the box just like the cold water.

My hypothesis was that the water would eventually mix and turn purple. It did eventually turn purple when the hot water and the cold water cooled and warmed up.