There are 26 plum trees in the schoolyard (clearly the arborists involved in the project didn't think about the kinds of mischief 700 children can get into with stray fruit) and one of the trees is planted directly outside my classroom. A few weeks ago, to help us celebrate Chinese New Year, we made little blossoming trees as an art project. I proudly displayed them in the window for all passersby to enjoy.
Well, imagine my surprise when I arrived at work to find that the plum tree which stares at our artwork all day had burst into bloom.....
...while the next tree over (along with the other 24 on campus) had only a few open blossoms.
My class and I took a little tree walk to count blossoms and enjoy the sunshine. Then, we sat around "our" tree to come up with some theories. It seemed to us that the growing conditions were exactly the same for most of the trees, since they received the same amount of sun and rain, and just generally lived identical lives. What then, caused our tree to declare the arrival of spring a full week sooner than the others? A few out-of the-box thinkers figured that the tree was fooled into blooming by our decoys. The general consensus, though, was that the little plum tree just looked at the shining examples in our window, and decided that it wanted to be just like them. It knew what was possible, so it made up its mind to try hard to blossom. And by George, it succeeded! (I'm trying to not equate this with girls wanting to look like airbrushed magazine models, because that will spoil my warm fuzzy feeling about the whole thing.) My favorite insight came from a student who said, "Mrs. C., I think we should put pictures of ice cream trees in the window and see what happens..."
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