Tu B’Shevat, the 15th of Shevat on the Jewish calendar (celebrated this year on Saturday, February 11, 2017)is the day that marks the beginning of a “new year” for trees. This is the season in which the earliest-blooming trees in the Land of Israel emerge from their winter sleep and begin a new fruit-bearing cycle.
This week we talked about how we appreciate the trees Hashem made by learning all that comes from a tree! We also discovered how similar we are to trees!
Ava and Max helped by placing different pictures of what comes from a tree on our Tu B'shvat bulletin board.
Nature inspired art
Negative space art
The children were invited to place a variety of nature items onto a paper and spray with water colors. It was fascinating to see all the different shapes they made by removing them when they were done.
Nature items in the play dough encouraged the children to use their imagination and create different trees, forests etc. Bela Riva covered all the leaves with pieces of play dough. This required a lot of patience since the weight of the play dough made it challenging.
Elizabeth showed us a hidden bead in her play dough that was the 'seed'!
Beading Branches
This was a great fine motor skills activity. There were different size beads available to see what fits best. We always love when mom or dads join the activity! :)
We are like the trees!
On Tu b'shvat we focus on the verse in the Torah “for man is a tree of the field” (Deuteronomy 20:19)
Why are we celebrating the tree's Birthday? We are compared to a tree in many special ways. This week we focused on a couple of them.
First Motty helped demonstrate how our bodies look like a tree. We placed roots by his feet, a trunk on his belly and his long arms became the branches.
We don't grow fruit however, the MITZVOS we do , are like sweet FRUIT to Hashem!
Hannah demonstrated this by helping us read the fruit Mitzvah notes on her arm branches.
Tu B'shvat project
Making their own trees. Some children loved the sensation of painting on themselves.
Mitzvah notes this week were written on fruit to bring this lesson home. The children requested to draw their own mitzvahs to add to their tree! It was so nice to hear all their mitzvahs that they do at home that they wanted to document.
Hannah drawing her 'show and tell' wolf to document how she shared it with her friends!
Recycling center
While learning a lot about the trees we took this opportunity to talk about recycling. The trees give so much to us we should try reusing items to make it last longer! We took some different cartons and rolls from our recycling draw and let the children create whatever they wanted to make!
Menachem "It's a ride"
Visiting the trees!
In back of our school there is a beautiful big field with a lot of big majestic trees. The children ran from tree to tree letting them know it was their birthday coming soon!
Alef Beis recognition game!
Thank you Morah Rachel for bringing in your cat and teaching us a lot of interesting facts.
Thank you Motty for donating a puzzle to our class on your birthday it was a great team effort activity!
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