Leaf Classification for All Ages
Over Thanksgiving my husband and I walked the Tsurai Trail on Trinidad Head here in Northern California. I was reminded of the joyful years I spent as a Montessori teacher sharing botany with students, adults, and with my own children and grandchildren.
(view of Trinidad Beach from Trinidad Head, and map of the Tsurai Trail)
There are many ways to explore and classify leaves—and with just a few keys even the youngest child can learn to describe and classify the characteristics of leaves.
Here is a list from the book The Red Corolla, Montessori Cosmic Education for Age 3-6 (pages 127-128):
1. Leaf veins: parallel, reticulate
2. Leaf vein systems: main vein or midrib, side veins, veinlet
3. Leaves: simple or compound
4. Compound leaves: palmately compound, pinnately compound
5. Margins: palmately lobed, palmately fid, palmately partite, palmately sect
6. Margins: pinnately lobed, pinnately fid, pinnately partite, pinnately sect
7. Leaf shapes connected with geometry: ovate, obovate, cordate, obcordate, lanceolate, oblanceolate, hastate, sagittate, spatulate, reniform, elliptical, linear, acicular, orbicular, lyrate, runcinate, peltate
8. Leaf attachment to stem: petiolate, sessile
9. Leaf attachment to stem: opposite, alternate, whorled
10. Margins: entire or dented
11. Dented margins: serrate, dentate, or crenate
Not too much, not too little, just the right amount of information.
When we prepare to take a young child to an art museum, we visit ahead of time and select just a few pieces of art to show a child so he can focus easily and not be overwhelmed. It is the same with exploring plant life. On this walk I selected the classifications 10 and 11 from the above list, taking pictures of several examples of the margins (edges) of leaves, just as I would have done when preparing to bring children to this place. I hope you enjoy coming along with me and exploring leaf margins.
Leaf Margins
I did not look for leaf shapes, or attachment to the stem, or the veins, just the margins. It was fascinating.
Are the margins, or edges, of these leaves in this blog post entire (smooth) serrated, dentate, crenate? You decide.
Books and pictures are important and extend learning, but they mean much more if they are preceded by experience. As Dr. Montessori wrote in in her book Childhood to Adolescence:
No description, no image in any book can replace the sight of real trees and all the life to be found around them in a real forest. Something emanates from those trees which speaks to the soul, something no book, no museum, can give. The forest reveals that it is not only the trees that exist, but a whole, inter-related collection of lives.
In the Montessori primary, casa, or preschool class, leaves are found on classroom plants, attached to the stems of flowers for flower arranging, on plants in the school garden (weeds as well as intentionally planted) or leaves brought in from home. Studying these leaves is a practice in all Montessori primary classes.
But many parents also want to learn and share what they discover with their children at home and in the community. This models an interest in nature that fosters an early love of the environment. It can last a lifetime.
Learning about leaves is interesting at all ages. Some years ago I gave the botany (and other culture) lectures at the first AMI primary course in Morocco. On our botany field trip, the adult students were just as excited with their discoveries as children.
CLICK: More about the culture lessons in the Morocco course
It is useful to learn the local names of plants and trees but such names are not universal. When we teach children the true, international language of botanical classification, we are giving keys that can open the door to noticing, appreciating, naming, and talking about leaves with friends and families. And no matter where they go in the world the classification works. This is extremely satisfying to children.
NOTE: All of the Morocco lectures are shared in the book The Red Corolla. CLICK: Red Corolla
Details and ordering information for The Red Corolla, Montessori Cosmic Education for Age 3-6+ (a workshop in a book) can be found here, CLICK: Ordering
I hope you enjoyed the pictures of the leaves we found here in Trinidad, California this week. And that you are inspired to discover and share the botany in your own place.
Blessings,
Susan
Home page, CLICK: Susan
To see other books in this series, CLICK: Books