Tu B'Shevat Theme: A Bird's Eye View

We've talked about parts of trees and how they grow. We've talked about the many things inside and outside that we get from trees. We've talked about how trees change through the seasons. We've explored where and how trees live and how they help us to live. We have even touched upon how we can help trees live by recycling, reusing and being resourceful with our natural and man-made materials. Yet we cannot neglect to mention the many other living creatures that benefit from trees and even call them home! To incorporate that theme into our Tu B'Shevat unit, we focused a bit on birds.

Since overcoming his brief but intense phobia of our pretend birds in this small world bin, my little guy has LOVED building nests for and feeding these colorful little guys. One of his very favorite books of all time right now is P.D. Eastman's Are You My Mother?. He requests to read it together just about every day! So for the sake of our Bird Themed day, I chose another book to place inside his schoolbag and read together. He loved the illustrations in Dianna Hutts Aston's A Nest is Noisy, illustrated by Sylvia Long. The author and illustrator team have published a few lovely children's books about various wonders of nature and our library was a great resource to find them. After reading together, he couldn't wait to get back to his Bird World bin and build some more nests for his feathered friends!

We took a brief break from our bird themed fun to revisit our Rainbow Celery science experiment from the beginning of the week and then to water our seeds again. He has been totally fascinated by how the celery "drank" the colored water and how we can see that in the change of the leaves. In addition, using the set of beakers we found at our local Dollar Tree, he could really see how the water level decreased as the celery stalks soaked it up through transpiration! I have loved seeing how his journaling process has grown over this year; he has begun to draw lines and shapes that represent certain things--in this case, the green celery and the different colored leaves and water.

Next it was time to make a special treat for our feathered friends outside! We did a similar activity this past fall when we were learning about Parshas Bereishit (the story of Creation) using pine cones, peanut butter and birdseed. The birds definitely appreciated it and all that was left were some very bare pine cones hanging from the large bush in our front yard. As part of our garden clean up, we removed them from the bush to make room for our project from today: a winter treat for the birds! Since we have been learning about recycling and reusing household items, I thought using toilet paper tubes would be a great way to extend that theme into our activity today.

He used a wooden craft stick to smear the peanut butter all over the outside of the tube (and all over his outfit). If you have peanut allergies around, you can use other nut butters or in lieu of using nut products at all, you can use shortening. 

Next it was time to roll the tubes in the birdseed. He also liked sprinkling it on top! We talked about this being a snack for the birds and I provided a separate snack for my peanut butter lover! If you are concerned about little ones taking a taste, you may wish to use seeds meant for human consumption instead, like pumpkin and sunflower seeds.

When we were all done, he helped me string yarn through the tube and we hung the treats outside for the birds to enjoy.

We've had some amazing and unseasonably warm weather this week, so we took a trip to the park to look for more birds! Hey, there's one right now! When we got home, he was super excited to see a bunch of little sparrows fluttering away from our bush having just been enjoying the special treats we made together.

We had a lot of fun learning and playing about birds. We will be completing our unit on Tu B'Shevat (which actually coincides with this Shabbat) with some tasty activities related to the many treats that we get from trees. Until then, Happy Playing!