Fall: apples or peaches, fall-colored leaves. We make our leaves by squirting red, yellow, and orange paint onto a piece of paper, then scraping the paint with a comb or paint scraper. This looks so nice and the comb marks sort of simulate the veins in the leaves (at least that’s what I tell my kids.)

Winter: Snow, snowflakes. I do hearts in February.

Spring: apple blossoms, green leaves, squirrels, birds.

I take the tree down in the summer.

You can use a carpet tube for a tree trunk (wall-to-wall carpet is rolled on a large tube.) Any carpet store should be able to donate a tube for you to paint and add your branches and leaves.

I saw a bulletin board where the teacher bought a red/white checker tablecloth for the background and made a picnic under a tree. She had Styrofoam ants with pipe cleaner legs, and even sawed a soda can in half to staple it to the board. This was at my son’s special needs school.

OR

coffee can trunk (that’s a little beat up)…. Go-gurt tubes branches…. partially-blown balloons for foliage

OR

have kids wear all-brown clothes…. and cover them with clown wigs for foliage