Tu BiSh’vat

Plant parsley seeds (for Passover!) and taste tree-fruits together.

Children wonder and discover; you facilitate more than you lecture.

• Why are trees important to us?
• What can we do to keep our planet healthy?
• Why celebrate trees in the middle of winter?

Tu BiSh’vat is the birthday of the trees. We taste fruits, plant seeds, and learn to protect our planet. In Israel the climate differs from Minnesota — trees bud now there.

• Ilan / Etz — tree
• Tu BiSh’vat — 15th of Sh’vat
• Shomrei adamah — earth caretakers

“Why a birthday for trees in winter?”

In Israel the rainy season ends and trees begin to bloom now — even when it’s snowy here.

• Children understand Tu BiSh’vat as the trees’ birthday.
• Children connect to caring for the earth (shomrei adamah).

Connect earth-care to children’s real lives (recycling, watering plants) so every child can act.

Folktale. Honi Plants a Carob Tree (Talmudic) — an old man plants a tree he will never sit under, so children long after him can.

Changemaker. Rachel the Poet — wrote songs about planting and caring for the land that Israeli children still sing a hundred years later.

I wonder what I could plant or help to grow?

“We planted parsley for our Passover seder! Try at home: water it together and watch it grow.”