Student Experts Share Maple Knowledge at Annual Fest

Second-graders transformed into educators at this week’s Maple Fest, enthusiastically presenting their research on maple trees, tapping, sap, and evaporation to their ECC visitors and fellow Lower Schoolers. The student experts used their posters as teaching tools and offered festival-goers a fun treat: samples of sap and syrup, harvested right from our own backyard!

For the past nine years, SCH Lower School students have held Maple Fest, spending the months leading up to the March festival tapping and researching 15 trees on campus. This year, after a cold winter—ideal for production—they fetched nearly 35 gallons of sap, five times more than last year when there was an unseasonably warm winter.

“This past week was perfect weather for production,” says Marianne Maloy, Lower School science teacher. “We get more sap when it’s freezing at night and above freezing during the day.”

The freeze-thaw cycle is essential for maple sap flow, with freezing nights driving sap upwards, and sugar maples have evolved to protect their vascular systems with concentrated sap, highlighting the complex relationship between trees and temperature.