This field guide was created by kindergarten students from the Capital City Public Charter School in Washington, D.C. as part of a Learning Expedition on Trees in 2002. It is an example of a Local Field Guide – created for a site that had no existing guide.

Students worked with local experts, including an arborist, to learn tree identification and care, and made multiple visits to a park near the school to create this guide. Groups of 5 to 6 students adopted a particular tree to study, and they observed it during fieldwork in different seasons. Students viewed models of professional and student-created field guides to decide what features and qualities they wished to include in this guide. They chose to include some standard features such as descriptions, photographs, drawings and locations; they also included unique features, such as “How to Live with Trees” and “Why Are Trees Important?”

Text in the book is a combination of student descriptions dictated to teacher typists and scanned images of hand-written captions by students. Photographs and drawings are by the students.

This project was featured in an exhibit at the Harvard Graduate School of Education in 2010 featuring exemplary student work, Books for Kids, by Kids.