Emerson Exchange 365

For 52 years, I have been talking to kids about Science, Technology, Engineering, Art and Mathematics (also referred to as STEAM) I also talk to parents about how they can get their kids engaged in the world of STEAM. Where do I hold these “talks”? Well, just about anywhere—at work, in schools, at fairs, public events, shopping malls, grocery stores, you name it.

By now, you’ve likely noticed that I use the acronym STEAM and not STEM. That’s because I believe that art and science go hand in hand. They are the avatars of human creativity. Without Art, there would be no inventors, no innovators and no dreamers. Here’s a great article on STEAM from Scientific American.

Back when I was a kid, we didn’t have STEAM. We had what was called the three “R’s”. Reading, wRiting, and aRithmetic. Yeah, it didn’t make sense to me either. Then, if you wanted to learn more than the three R’s, in or out of school, you had to go out on your own and talk to people, observe and experiment. Today, they call this The Scientific Method.

In the summers, my cousins and I spent four to six weeks at our Grandparents farm. This was a common thing to do back then. Our parents worked and Grandma and Grandpa could always use an extra five pair of hands to help around the place. They had a dairy farm, with enough crops to feed the livestock and still some to sell at the market. It was not a big farm, about 250 acres.

I was 12 at the time and the only boy. The older two cousins, Susan and Janey would help Grandma around the house most of the day, while us younger ones, Alice, Carol and myself, did simple chores around the farm. The days were long, but the work was easy, which gave us plenty of spare time to play and experiment.

In the summer of 1971, I suggested that we build a treehouse in the orchard. There wasn’t a lot of planning, but we each had an idea on what the house would look like. (Too bad we didn’t share that knowledge up front with each other.) What we did share was the idea that it had to be in tree. The orchard was a good place because the trees were short enough for us to climb and there were lots to pick from.

First thing we needed was to find wood. We checked around the barn and main buildings for boards. If it wasn’t nailed down, it was ours. Within an hour, we had wood to build the biggest tree house in the world. All we had to do was find a tree.

In the orchard, we found three trees that would work. I liked the pear tree because it was tall and thin. Alice picked the apple tree, because she likes pears. She’s smart, but a bit strange. Carol picked a different apple tree closer to the middle of the orchard, it was private, like her. We weighed our options and after “debating” for about 20 minutes, we picked a totally different tree. Our collective “Science” skills pointed us to the crab apple tree; we concluded that our Grandparents might not want us to build in a tree that had fruit you could eat. The only fruit that we didn’t like to eat, was from the crab apple tree in the back corner of the orchard.

We dragged the wood to our new tree location. Carol came up with the idea that we should sort the wood by size. Did we just use “Math” here? We agreed. Once the wood was moved and sorted, we climbed the tree and found that there wasn’t any place to build a floor. There was always a branch or two in the way. Lunch time was coming and we wanted to get something done. We would cut the branches to make room for the floor. I remember we spent more time talking about it than it took to do.

After lunch, we ran to the drive shed and got tools. A saw, a hammer, nails, the essentials of tree house building. Our “Technology” skills were kicking in. Back at the tree new ideas formed on how the floor could be supported. If we cut a branch here and here, nail a board to the piece that

remained, it should work. Alice and Carol held a board up so we knew where to cut the branch. A few minutes later we had the first board nailed in place. The rest of boards were nailed to it and the other branches. That, you could say, was our “Engineering” skills at work.

Soon, the floor started to look like a floor. It wasn’t square or level but it was a good 10 feet off the ground and offered a great view (less the pesky crab apple leaves). We needed a rope, more nails, and another hammer, Alice dropped back down to the ground and ran off to the drive shed again. When she came back she looked up at the floor and told us that it was crooked. We needed to level it. Our “Math” skills were being challenged. Alice would stay on the ground and give us directions. She tossed the rope up. Carol wrapped it over a higher branch and started absentminded started swinging from it.

How to level the floor… an experiment took place. I would remove some of the nails that we had hammered into the tree and Carol and I would stand on the floor and walk around until it “felt right” or it moved and Alice said it looked level. A true engineer would have shaken their head in shame at us. I think I had removed most of the nails from the tree before the floor broke free and if Carol hadn’t been hanging on the rope at the time, I might be missing a cousin.

Other than the two boards I had been kneeling on, the floor survived and it leveled itself out. I told Carol to just keep hanging on the rope. I got back on my now skinned knees and hammered a fist full of nails into the floor frame and back into the new branches the floor was now against. Carol stepped back on the floor still holding the rope. We jumped a few times up and down deeming it was safe. The yet unnamed “Scientific Method” had worked. Then, Alice, Carol and I laid on the floor staring up at the sky until it was dinner time…wondering if building a tree house was such a good idea.

After dinner, my older cousins were interested in seeing the tree house that we had been working on. Off to the orchard we ran. Neither was impressed. Alice climbed the tree to show them how to get up there. Susan and Janey just looked at each other and told us that they would rather go and watch the cows.

We used the rope to haul more wood up for the next day. It was getting late and the sun was going down. Intrigued, the older cousins rejoined us and we all laid on our backs looking up through the branches at the clouds in the sky and waited for the stars to come out.

Next day, same routine for my older cousins, but they got time off helping Grandma to come bring milk and cookies to the tree house. We had just finished getting one wall up before they came. Susan asked where the window was going to be…

We hadn’t thought about windows, or even a door. Maybe we should. Here’s where “Art” came along. Susan and Janey went back to the house and returned with a notebook and pencils. They sketched what they thought the tree house should look like. The five of us worked on the drawings for two hours straight. We ended up with a set of drawings, one sheet for each wall, for the roof, and for the trap door in the floor.

By the time Susan and Janey got back from their afternoon chores, we had figured out how to use a tape measure to measure the frames. This is where we learned how to measure twice and cut once. More “Math” this time. The walls went up quickly now that we had a plan. Little adjustments were made to fix things we hadn’t thought of. “Engineering” skills. Things like glass windows we didn’t have any. A wood frame would do.

By the end of the week our tree house was done. You could say that it was the size of a small tool shed. Enough floor space that all five of us and three more could lay down on, and tall enough that none of us hit our heads, unless we really jumped. It had three windows with no glass, but baffles that you could push into the holes to keep the rain and wind out. A trap door in the floor that caused us more grief later than it was worth and a hole in the roof that we could still climb out of and enjoy the night sky.

So, what did we learn? At the time, nothing that you could put a name to. Initially, we didn’t have a plan, but we did have an idea. That idea became an experiment. Out of the experiment, we came up with a design. The design became the plan. Our goal as a team was to execute that plan. Today, our efforts would have been considered a STEAM activity. We successfully integrated all elements of said acronym, thought about the things we did, and then applied The Scientific Method to come up with solutions.

Our treehouse stood for 10 more years after that summer. Each year we came back and made minor repairs, including real windows and shutters to protect them from the wind. However, our treehouse was much more than an ongoing STEAM activity. It was a safe haven; it was a place to sit and study, a place to have fun and a place to dream of our next big adventure. Ultimately, I carried the knowledge I gained that summer into my adult life and shared it with my kids and their friends. Today, I share that knowledge by volunteering my time to schools who support STEAM activities with their students. Curious about how to build a treehouse of your own? Here's an article with 30 DIY Treehouses.

Emerson Exchange 365

Full STEAM Ahead: A Treehouse Tale