Tags: hiking, plants

How do you keep kids engaged in outdoor activities around the yard or on nature walks? Always have some fun facts and tricks at the ready!

Fun facts and even a magic trick for kids:

• There are 25 types of acorns in Connecticut.
• Each one is unique to the type of oak trees that it comes from, it’s like a fingerprint for the tree.
• Oak trees are planted to give shade to an area.
• Burning oak in your fireplace give out 25-34 million BTU per cord according to the US Forestry Service-that means it makes a really hot fire!
• The animals that most like to eat acorns are squirrels, mice, pigeons, ducks, deer and pigs.
• The oak is the national tree of the United States, it symbolizes strength. This happened in 2004.
• The United States isn’t the only country that has the oak as the national tree, so does England, Estonia, France, Germany, Moldova, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Wales and Serbia.
• The symbol for the University of Connecticut contains two white oak acorns in it.

Magic trick:

Using a fresh acorn (not aged brown but not under ripe pure greencap) score around the top of the “hat” of the acorn with your fingernail. Tell the child to say hello to the acorn, when they do, remove the cap/”hat” and let the acorn do a tiny bow. This goes over great in our pre-school through first grade junior arborist classes! The kids then like to practice on each other!

Print this page and let your kids color in the image!