Let's learn English in the Forest!

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Well hey welcome to this video, it is kind of fun to be out here in nature today.

We're gonna talk about the season of Fall and we're gonna talk about it out here in

the forest.

In Canada we have four seasons.

We have Winter when the snow flies and it's really really cold.

We have Spring when everything starts to grow and the trees get leaves back on them again.

We have Summer when everything grows like crazy, that means it grows a lot!

And it's really really hot.

And we have Fall or Autumn.

It has two names in English.

Generally we use the term, "Fall" and I think "Fall" became popular because in the, in the

Fall leaves fall off the trees.

So you'll see in the path behind me there's just all kinds of leaves that have fallen

from the trees.

In the Fall trees turn from their normal green colour to brown, red, orange, yellow, and

all the shades in between and it's really a beautiful season to be outside.

So in English we have three words to describe the forest.

We have, "forest".

We have, "woods".

And we have, "bush".

In my area of Ontario, Canada we generally use the term, "bush".

If I was to say to someone, "I'm going out to the forest to go for a walk."

They might look at me funny, because we don't use the word, "forest" a lot in this area.

But if I said, "I'm going out to the bush to go for a walk."

They would understand what I'm talking about.

I thought I'd stop for a minute and tell you why we have a maple leaf on our flag, why

the flag of Canada has a maple leaf.

It's because we have maple trees and maple leaves everywhere.

On the ground around me there's just all these nice red maple leaves that have fallen off

a tree.

So because there's so many maple trees we decided to use the maple leaf, which is the

leaf from the maple tree on our flag.

So, ….. Now you know!

So you can see behind me that a lot of leaves fall off the trees in the Fall.

If we were in town, if we were in the city, we would have to rake these leaves up into

a pile and often people rake leaves into a pile and then their kids jump into the pile

for fun.

It's a pretty common thing for young Canadian kids to do.

So there's three main reasons why you might come out to the woods, or the forest.

You might be someone who is a avid hunter.

That's someone who really likes hunting for animals, maybe with a bow and arrow.

It's possible that you just like to go on a hike or a nature walk.

And it's also possible that you're coming out to the forest to cut down trees for firewood.

In Canada we still have a lot of people that use wood to heat their houses in the winter.

So it's pretty common to come out to the forest or the woods to cut down trees for firewood.

Usually when you do that you have a chainsaw.

I'll put a picture up here of a chainsaw.

And you have what we call a log splitter in order to split the pieces of wood into firewood,

and then that firewood is used in a wood burning stove to heat their home.

So there's really two kinds of trees that you'll find in the forest.

There's deciduous trees.

Those are trees where the leaves turn colour and they fall off in the Autumn or Fall.

Deciduous trees are trees like, maple, or oak, or poplar.

There's also coniferous trees.

Coniferous trees are trees that have needles instead of leaves, and they stay green year

round.

The needles don't fall off in the winter.

A few examples of coniferous trees are trees like spruce, or pine, or cedar.

So I'm in a clearing right now.

A clearing is an area where there's no trees, and I thought this would be a good time to

go over the parts of the tree.

The part of the tree that's underground, way down there underground, is called the roots.

This right here, this right here is called the trunk.

And the, the skin of the trunk is called the bark.

Up there you have a branch, and if we look even higher you'll see some twigs, which are

small branches, and you'll see the leaves.

So there's also the parts of the tree that we refer to after it has been cut down or

after it has died.

This is a stick.

This is a log.

Logs are generally used to make lumber to build houses.

And sticks are used for, well, just about everything including roasting marshmallows

on a fire, or maybe hot dogs.

So after a tree gets cut down the part of the tree that's left we call a tree stump.

So this is a tree stump from a tree that was cut down, probably with a chainsaw, and there's

another one over here where we have a tree stump and someone did a carving on the top.

A cute little bear.

So this is a tree stump.

This is a wood carving.

So there's a variety of animals that you'll find in the forest.

You'll obviously find birds.

I don't know if you can hear these birds up in the these trees here.

They're being pretty loud.

But generally in this part of Ontario all we really see are maybe the odd squirrel,

or maybe the odd chipmunk.

There's also a few raccoons, but generally we don't see bigger animals like bears.

Thank goodness.

But there is some deer.

From time to time we will see deer.

I'm not sure if you can hear it right now, but it's really nice in the Fall because the

leaves rustle as the wind blows through them.

In English we say, "rustling" when two things kind of rub together in the wind.

I'll just stop talking for a minute and we can listen to the rustling of the leaves.

Hopefully you could hear it.

Well hey that was fun.

Thank you so much for coming to the forest with me today.

I hope this video helped you learn some English words and phrases that you would use to describe

the forest.

Bob the Canadian here.

You can learn English with Bob the Canadian!

Don't forget to click the subscribe button below, and if you want give me a thumbs up,

and for sure share this video with anyone that you know that is learning English.

Bob the Canadian here.

Have a great week!