Today we were supposed to go outside to the Nature Trail for art with Mary Lou, but it rained... all day! Rather than go outside to sketch, we decided to bring the outside inside. We spent a lot of time discussing the Dogwood branch and leaves. We found some great resources on the internet that helped us learn the scientific words that naturalists use to classify leaves. There was a lot of disagreement over the shape, margins, and "venation" of the leaves. We used the chart below to help guide us:
Suggestions for the shape were:
lanceolate, linear, acuminate, elliptic, and aristate
Suggestions for the margins were:
crenate, entire, and undulate
Suggestions for the venation were:
arcuate, dichotomous, pinnate, and cross venulate
What do you think? You can check out a bigger picture of the classification chart at:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/6/6a/Leaf_morphology.png
We realized that there is a lot more detail in leaves than we thought. As we venture out to the Nature Trail next week we will have to use all we know about leaves to identify the trees for our future podcasts.Check out our sketches:
http://picasaweb.google.com/thirdgradestonypoint/DogwoodBranch#
No comments:
Post a Comment