©Shira Ackerman Simchovitch

There are lots of beautiful trees in Israel
The Tamar (date palm) and Teena (fig) who has no leaves in the month of Shvat

The Zayit (olive) and Rimon (pomegranate) whose fruit will only ripen later in the year

Tu bishvat is a special day for all the trees in Israel, but the shekaydia (almond tree), with it
’s beautiful flowers is the queen of them all because she blossoms especially for Tu bishvat !

All over Israel you can find rows of shekadiyot . These trees are in the
Eylah Valley about a half an hour from Jerusalem.

The Keren Kayemet L’ Yisrael (Jewish National Fund) is in charge of planting all of the trees in Israel. Many people all over the world save money in blue boxes like the one in the picture. The money is used to plant trees all over the country.

Everyone can plant trees on Tu bishvat . Gan children go with their teachers and if you are in your car driving you can stop on the way and plant a tree.

Right when you walk into the supermarket you know Tu bishvat is coming because right in front are all the packages of dried fruit.

It ’s the same in the mall!

In preschools everywhere, there is a special corner with things that tell you that it ’s not too long until Tu bishvat.

In this class, children made trees you could never find for real – a pretzel tree, a candy tree, a toy tree and more.

And in this class, the children wrote their special blessings and wishes for the trees on leaves and pinned them to the tree.

Here ’s a tree made from cottage cheese containers!

And a painted forest

In this class the children learned about trees AND fruit and presented “The Very Hungry Caterpillar” by Eric Carle
(because he ate a lot of fruit and climbed on a tree)

These children had a Tu bishvat seder and wished everyone a chag sameach !