Tu B’Shvat

This week we focused our attention on the holiday of Tu B’Shvat, the birthday of the trees! We showed the children where New York is on the globe. We then explained to the children even though it is winter in New York and the trees do not have any leaves, on the other side of the world the sun is starting to warm up and it is becoming spring. We traced our fingers across the globe and showed them where Israel is. The children learned that in Israel people start planting trees and flowers start blooming. 

We talked about how trees, flowers and plants grow in the ground. They grow from seeds and grow roots underground and stems that come out of the ground. Trees and other plants need soil, water and sun to help it grow, just like water and food helps us grow. Tree and plants do not have mouths like us, so how do they drink water? As a fun science experiment we showed the children how celery drinks up water. We filled two different containers with water. In the first container we added red food coloring, while in the other one, we added blue food coloring. We then put in stalks of celery in each container and put them aside. When we came back to school the next day something had happened. The stalks of celery were not completely green anymore. One had turned a little red while the other one had become blue. The children were amazed! We showed the children the thin roots in the celery and explained to them how the celery drinks it up through the roots like long straws. 

 

We read The Giving Tree and discussed all of things that a tree provides for us, including: fruits, shade, paper, oxygen, and wood. 

The children also got the opportunity to plant this week. They painted their own flower pots and then added soil, seeds and water. We placed the flower pots on the window sill so that the flowers can get plenty of sun and we will be watching them grow. 

As a fun math activity we played a matching game with leaves and numbers. Each child got a leaf with a number written on it and had to match it to the number on the branches. Since we have twelve children in the class we counted to the number twelve. This activity helped teach the children number recognition and one to one correspondence.