Tomorrow is the Jewish holiday Tu B’Shevat – literally the 15th of the Hebrew month Shevat, which is the holiday of the trees. According to jewfaq.org:
Tu B’Shevat is the new year for the purpose of calculating the age of trees for tithing. Fruit from trees may not be eaten during the first three years; the fourth year’s fruit is for G-d, and after that, you can eat the fruit. Each tree is considered to have aged one year as of Tu B’Shevat, so if you planted a tree on Shevat 14, it begins its second year the next day, but if you plant a tree two days later, on Shevat 16, it does not reach its second year until the next Tu B’Shevat.
Simon brought home this page about seeds:
And he also made a bird feeder which I hung outside:
Finally, he brought home these painted mittens that had previously been hanging in the classroom:
Zachary also brought home a lot of Tu B’Shevat projects.
The little book on the left is called “How to grow a tree.” On the right is a list of things the tree needs – rain, sun, and love.
This picture has the parts of the tree labeled. And in the small container is an actual tree! Well, a seed anyway.
Finally, Zachary is starting to read books in English. He is supposed to read this to an adult 3 times. He already told me he wasn’t going to read it to me! I hope he does though!
Simon and I are moving on with our Letter of the Week Prep Program…we finished week 9 this week. This week’s theme was Cookies! If I was really doing this seriously with Simon, we would have baked cookies. But really we just discuss. The word of the week was dough, the shape of the week was the circle, the letter was I and the number was 9. Simon didn’t do his normal sticker sticking on the 9 because he was using dot markers – but most of them ended up on the part of the paper that I had to cut off to fit it on our poster!
I didn’t change the rhyme of the week because we haven’t been reading it each week anyway. I think I need to work harder on what we do with this program!
Have a great weekend!