Trees make a great decoration for Christmas and winter festivals. And every winter one of the most famous trees is the giant spruce at Rockefeller Center in New York City. There’s a limit on how tall a tree they can use: Norway spruces are about twice as tall as they are wide, and only a tree less than 55 feet wide can fit under the city bridges. So it can’t be more than 110 feet tall. This tree in the picture is shorter than that, but it still holds more than 50,000 tiny lights — and a 9 1/2-foot star that weighs 550 pounds!
Wee ones: The star on the big tree has 12 points. Is that more or less than a 5-pointed star?
Little kids: If it takes 5 hours to drive the tree into the city to Rockefeller Center, when does the tree arrive if the trip starts at 1:00 pm? Bonus: If you stand next to that 9 1/2-foot star, how much taller than you would it be? (You can round your height to the nearest 1/2 foot).
Big kids: Best of all, the wood from the tree will be used to build houses! If 2023 was the 17th year they turned that tree into houses, in what year was the 1st? Bonus: If a tree in someone’s house is 6 feet tall, how many of those would you have to stack to stand taller than a 79-foot tree?
Answers:
Wee ones: More points.
Little kids: At 6 pm. Bonus: Different for everyone…count the feet between your height and 9 1/2 feet.
Big kids: In 2007. We don’t subtract 17 — that would give you the “zero” year. If it’s the 17th year, the 1st year was 16 years ago. Bonus: 14 trees!
