What's Your Favorite Tree?

While this is a great song for Arbor Day, it also works well for spring or summer time. Plus, it can be useful as a cross curricular resource if your students' science class is delving into dendrology (study of trees) or just plain botany (study of plants).

This is a list song, which is to say it rattles off information in list form over the course of the tune. In this case, we list lots of tree types. This is a good exercise in learning tree names and enunciating! Singing the information can also help students to memorize it.

The melody has some syncopated rhythms, but a good amount of repetition as well, so it shouldn't be too hard to learn. Be sure to go over pronunciations of trees with your students separately from singing first. If you find that some of our pronunciations on the recording are not what you or your students would say (different areas of the country/world use different pronunciations), go ahead and change what you want. For example, "Jujube" is pronounced with three syllables on the recording, but it can also be pronounced with two. Similarly, "Fraser" is pronounced "fray-zer" on the recording, but we know lots of folks who prefer to say "fray-zher" – especially in Wisconsin. You do what feels right.

One thing you can try with your singers is substituting their favorite trees for some of the ones given. For instance, instead of "Chestnut" you might say "Pawpaw." Instead of "Western Larch" you might say "Norway Spruce." In some cases this might change the rhythm of the lyrics, and that's okay.

Another thing you can do is explain the difference between deciduous and evergreen trees. You might let the science teacher know you have this resource, and ask if there are topics within this subject you can reinforce in music class. Make it a whole learning experience.