Tree Tape for Kids

Do you want to teach your students about the carbon sequestering power of trees? Putting this type of information into context can be quite a challenge. Knowing how many grams of CO2 a tree can absorb may not have a lot of meaning to your students, and simply giving them the statistics is not particularly engaging. This clever (and free) device from British designer Nitipak Samsen is just the thing to help!

The Tree Tape for Kids translates how much CO2 is absorbed by individual trees into the amount of time you spend doing various activities. The Tree Tape will measure how much CO2 is absorbed by a tree and convert it into minutes on an airline flight, days of breathing, number of cheeseburgers, or amount of electricity (UK only). For older, of age audiences, the Tree Tape can also tell you how much CO2 is absorbed by a tree per pint of lager.

Last Friday was Arbor Day, a great time to focus on teaching about trees. Using the Tree Tape for Kids in your schoolyard would be a great follow-up activity to add an educational component to last week’s festivities, or you could plan ahead for next year! It is also a great tool to help you introduce lessons on global climate change.

The directions for this activity are simple: Just go to Mr. Samsen’s Tree Tape for Kids website and click “Create and Download.” You will be asked how many Tree Tapes you would like to print per page, what type of tree you will be measuring (rainforest, hard wood, soft wood, or other, and what type of activity you would like to measure (air travel, breathing, ect.). A .pdf file will be generated based on this information. Print the Tree Tapes out and follow the easy assembly instructions that are provided on the Tree Tape website. Use the Tree Tape to measure the girth of a tree 1.30 meters (4.27 feet) above the ground, and you will find out how much CO2 is sequestered by the tree based on the activity you chose. Now get outside and enjoy!