Tu B'Shevat and Trees Theme: Introduction

A vertical art opportunity: I prepared
a sheet of easel paper with a tree trunk
and will provide a variety of art & craft
materials in the bag on the door handle
over the next couple of weeks for
decorating!

We are beginning a new theme with the new Jewish month of Shevat, which began over Shabbat this past weekend. Tu B'Shevat, or the 15th of Shevat is the annual "new year" or "birthday" of the trees in Jewish tradition. In Israel this marks the beginning of the fruit-bearing cycles of the earliest blooming trees. Here in many places, the trees are still dormant in their wintry rest (if not covered by snow)! Nonetheless, it is a wonderful time to teach children about the seasonal cycle of trees, how they grow, and all that they provide for us and animals alike. I particularly like to take this time to review the four seasons and to introduce the important concept of taking care of our planet so that it can continue to care for us.

We have already begun to set the stage by setting up our play and learning area with some new themed activities and materials. Our unit will carry us into the next couple of weeks, culminating on Tu B'Shevat, which will be observed this year from sundown on February 10 to nightfall on February 11. You can read more about Tu B'Shevat here. Our unit will include a lot of nature-based play (we are fortunate to be having a pretty mild winter season here), process art, science, sensory play, great literature and some fun learning activities and projects as well.

Our Nature Observation Station is set to observe parts of a tree. It's a small collection right now (leftover from our Autumn theme, but will grow as we continue collecting on some tree themed nature scavenger hunts. We also have a couple of our old favorite Tu B'Shevat books (plus a new puzzle for matching baby animals to their parent animals that my son was very excited about--and trees definitely provide food and shelter for a lot of different animals!).

I adapted our Autmn tree felt set to include accessories for all four seasons so we can observe and play about a year in the life of a tree. In addition to the trunk and branches, I added velcro dots to some Autumn leaves, some artificial ivy leaves pulled from a Dollar Tree vine I'd used over Sukkot for our play sukkah, some artificial flowers and some foam snowflakes. I love creating my own homeschool materials as we go along and I aim not to break our budget in doing so. Everything we used to make this felt set was already something we had previously used for another theme or activity. What better way to teach about the importance of recycling than to model it in action?

One thing I did purchase for this unit was a package of wooden craft disks with the bark still attached. I love natural materials for play and see so many ways we can use these for this theme as well as in the future. Right now they are in a STEAM drawer with an invitation to build/trace a shape. (I just printed off and laminated these coloring sheets from ColoringCastle.comhttp://www.coloringcastle.com/. They could definitely be used with other loose parts, blocks, playdough, clay or dry erase markers as well.)

We had some great books at home and found several more at our local library. Some great sub-themes to a unit on trees can include birds and animals who live in trees, plants and planting, recycling and being kind to the environment, the four seasons and foods and materials we get from trees. I came across a great list of suggested tree-themed reading along with corresponding activities on one of my favorite blogs, Fantastic Fun and Learning.

I hit up another great blog, Picklebums, for some fun, free printable planting themed playdough mats. I printed and laminated them to use with playdough, clay, loose parts and dry erase markers.

One of our favorite books of all time and a great one for a tree theme is Bill Martin's Chicka Chicka Boom Boom. My son has been really into his letters lately and alphabet themed activities. This shelf is set up to incorporate that (along with another favorite alphabet book) with a laminated picture of the famous coconut tree--ready to use with magnet letters or dry erase markers. This is a great way to sneak some letter review into the middle of the year. I taped our laminated coconut tree to a cookie sheet for a magnetic surface. It can be used independently or with guided activities to spell a name, word, to work on certain letters or even the whole alphabet as you retell the story. We also have an audio version of the book that my son loves to read along with (or listen along with in the car).

We did some Art Center revamping for this theme as well. We swapped out some materials from our last unit and swapped in a scrap paper/recycled greeting card tray and a recycling bin for items we collect at home that we can use for cutting practice, process art, collages and craft projects...

....and a variety of other things! My son took to the recycling bin right away! He has big plans for our little cardboard tubes!

We are excited to embark on our tree unit (pun definitely intended), but for now I will leave (yup, I did it again) with this:

Happy Playing!