Tall Trees Talk

Coming to visit Redwood National Park with your kids? Are you interested in learning about Redwoods? As a professional guide who spends a lot of time trying to come up with ways to teach people of different ages and educational backgrounds about redwood ecology, I am constantly looking for new ways to present the information. One of the best web sites I have found for information about redwood trees is from the San Francisco-based Save the Redwoods League www.savetheredwoods.org. Save the Redwoods League’s web site offers a wealth of online resources on just about everything redwood related. Save the Redwoods League has put a lot of time in to teaching kids about the Earth’s tallest beings. One of their new features is the online Redwood Transect Kit for Educators. It is fun to navigate and encourages visitors to learn about the redwood forest and then spend time outside exploring using a transect activity. (www.education.savetheredwoods.org) Somewhat like a treasure hunt, this method asks kids to follow a real or imaginary transect line through an area of forest and keep track of what they find such as leaves chewed by insects or other animals, seed pods, signs of fire or footprints. The website features a photo album to share images kids captured along the way as well as their redwood inspired artwork and poetry. Kids Ecology of the Redwood Forest is a teacher created site that serves as a mini-photo guide to the flora and fauna of the redwood forest. You can view photos of fern or conifer types before heading outside to look for these on your walk.