We use an environment to learn about the animal kingdom.  This year, the kindergarten is focusing on the environment of the Ya’axche’ tree in the tropical rain forests of Belize.  During our study of birds, we focused on the scarlet macaw and created beautiful macaws to live in our classroom Ya’axche’ tree.

Soon, our classroom will host a very large, very important tree!  We are busy planning, painting and building our Environment.We can’t wait to meet the animals who come to visit!

Painting the "trunk" of the tree

"I think the bark looks like this..."

Painting is fun!

Stay tuned to see all of our hard work as  we build our Ya’axche’ Tree!

After weeks of hints, clues, and guesses, we finally found out that our environment is the Ya’axche’ (pronounced yash-chay) Tree in the Belizean tropics.

Our drawings of the Ya'axche' Tree

THE YA’ AXCHE’ TREE

The Ya’axche’ is a magnificent tree with an abundance of flora and fauna who rely on it.  It is a tree with a rich cultural background for ancient and modern Maya people.  And it is big….really big!  It is a rapidly growing deciduous tree that reaches heights of 80 feet or more, and a diameter of five to eight feet above its buttresses (roots). The buttresses themselves can be up to ten feet tall and extend ten feet from the main trunk. (See the picture below).  The tree has a broad, flat crown of horizontal branches. The leaves are compound with five to eight lance-shaped leaflets that are three to eight inches long. From December to February the tree produces numerous five-part whitish to pink flowers which occur in dense clusters and bloom before the leaves appear. The tree produces three-to-six-inch long, elliptical fruits. These fruits contain many seeds surrounded by a dense mat of cottony fibers. The tree gets its common name (Cotton Tree) from these fibers which rain from the tree when the fruits ripen. The fibers are almost pure cellulose, buoyant, impervious to water, and have a low thermal conductivity, but they do not lend themselves to spinning. Called Kapok in Asia, the fibers are used for insulation, padding in sleping bags and life preservers, and for stuffing mattresses and pillows. In Puerto Rico the tree was often planted in the center of plazas for shade, and it is considered a valuable honey tree.

In Belize, the word Ya’axche’ is from the Maya dialect of Kek’chi (pronounced keck-chee) and its direct translation is not currently known, to us.  Our class intends to discover the meaning this year, but as the Kek’chi langauge is an oral based language, it may be difficult.  If you have any ideas, let us know!

Miss Curtze on the roots of a Ya'axche' tree in Belize