Tu B'Shevat

The kindergarten children walked into class one morning to find the discovery table filled with all kinds of unique (and very cool) things! "Wow!" said one child as he approached the table, "This is so cool! Can I touch it, can I try it out?" As the early arriver began to explore the discovery table, more children filtered into the classroom, and were immediately drawn to the area. "Morah said we can play with it!", said the first child who had really begun to investigate the items!

As the children began to explore the items, they also began to notice the pictures that had been posted in the area. Their faces lit up, as they began to make the connections. "Hey, this is water stuff, because it's Tu B'Shevat." "Ya, there are pipes and stuff!" "So," I asked, "Why are there pipes? What do pipes and water stuff have to do with Tu B'Shevat?" "Pipes take water to plants. We eat the fruit on Tu B'Shevat!", answered one friend.

Another friend was busy examining the pictures. "This guy is fixing pipes. Maybe it broke so the dirt was digged out and the soil went down to the other soil. Then, they turned off the water so they could fix the pipe!" "Interesting", I said, "So what makes you think the water was turned off?" "Well, if it wasn't there would be water coming out and he couldn't fix the pipe!", he answered!

When we came together at meeting, the children could not stop talking about their plans for the new materials. "I know, we can make a water park!" "Let's make a pool. " "We can just pipe it all together!" I asked the children where the water comes from that we use to bring to the plants. They responded, "oceans, rivers, the sea!" Why do we need to bring the plants water?" I asked. "Well, sometimes it doesn't rain enough and the plants will die."

Next, we made a list of all the things that plants need to grow. As we made our list, we talked about how different plants grow in different climates. We came to understand that ALL plants need the same things, but that plants need DIFFERENT amounts of those things! When we bring the water to the plants with a pipe system, it is called irrigation!

So why talk about irrigation on Tu B'Shevat? Well, Tu B'Shevat marks each agricultural year. The Torah tells us to not partake of the produce from a tree for the first 3 years of a tree's life. On Tu B'Shevat, we begin the yearly count. We depend on and value the produce that comes from trees. Through the implementation of irrigation systems, we take responsiblity for the care and growth of trees and plants. The children examined a map of Israel, and noticed that the Southern part of Israel is mostly desert. They were able to see that by developing the irrigation system in Israel, water from the North of the country gets carried to the Southern desert areas, and thus trees and plants can grow there too!

Our Tu B'Shevat experience also included a shopping trip to the PreK's fruit market! The Kindergarten children prepared coupons to bring to the market, that they used to "shop" for fruit. As the market was closing, the entire Zimmer Preschool and Kindergarten joined in a yummy TuB'Shevat treat!

Winter

The winter weather provided the perfect topic for our kindergarten children to experiment with writing their own Haiku. Breaking words into syllables helps us with letter sound recognition, blending sounds and spelling. A Haiku is a 3 line non-rhyming poem. The first and third line each have 5 syllables and the second line has seven syllables. We read together, If Not For the Cat, by Jack Prelutsky. It was a delightful book of Haiku poems that had us guessing about whom the author wrote. The children then set about writing their own “Who Am I?” Haiku poem about things we see in the winter. Here are a couple of poems the children wrote. Can you guess, “Who am I?”


“Falling down softly
 I feel cold and wet and white
 Children like to play!”

“I have three white balls
 I have buttons and a hat
 My name is Frosty”

Working with pattern blocks is fun and familiar to the children. Recently we introduced the pattern block template. We used the template to create unique people and animals. Each child traced 10 shapes from the template to make their creation. The challenge was to select the 10 shapes in such a way to construct the different body parts. The children made people, birds, cats and dogs!

Story mapping helps us to understand the structure of the story. We identify the characters and the setting of the story. Finally, we begin to understand how to summarize the story by recalling the beginning, middle and end. Working with our shared reading book, Let’s Have A Swim, the children worked together to create a large story map.

Then, each of the children selected his or her favorite winter sport to write about in a similar story. Each child selected a title and created a story map for his/her story. Finally, we illustrated our work. Check them out in our front lobby!