Tu B’Shevat Seven Species Book

Every year we love exploring the seven species as we learn about Tu B’Shevat and this year I decided we’d make our very own super simple book, our Tu B’Shevat Seven Species Book, to review and remember these special fruits.

What You’ll Need

Cardstock
Tu B’Shevat Seven Species Book template, either horizontal version or vertical version (or mix them up!)
Wheat:
- Yellow heart cut outs
- Glue
Dates:
- Date cut out
- Brown, purple, and black crayons
- Tree bark
Figs:
- Fig cut out
- Whatever purple materials you have, such as tape, crayons, paint sticks, glitter sticks, pastels, flowers
Barley:
- Barley templates
- Scissors
- Hole punch
- Gold ribbon
Grapes:
- Letter G cut out
- Purple circle cut outs
- Green paper stem cut out
- Glue
Olives:
- Brown paper
- Pencil or crayon
- Scissors
- Olive leaves or green paper
- Fresh olives or purple dyed water
Pomegranate:
- Red paint
- Q-tips

Putting It Together

Print out Tu B’Shevat Seven Species Book. We printed ours on card stock.
To make the wheat page, invite your child to glue the yellow heart cut outs on the yellow stalks on the book page.
To make the dates page, cut a date shape from paper. Invite your child to use brown, purple, and black crayons and rub on tree bark to make a cool textured design for the date. Once finished, glue the date cut out to the date page of the book.
To make the figs page, cut a fig shape from paper. Set out various purple colored materials and invite your child to make a multi-media collage with them. We used tape, crayons, paint sticks, glitter sticks, pastels, and purple flowers. Once done, glue the fig cut out to the fig page of the book.
To make the barley page, print then cut out the barley templates. Punch a hole on either side of each kernel. Thread the gold thread through each hole. We did this activity years ago; you can find our tutorial here.
To make the grapes page, cut the letter G out of paper. Invite your child to glue on purple circles for the grapes and a green paper stem. Once finished, glue the G is for Grapes on the grape page.
To make the olives page, trace your child’s hand on brown paper. Have them cut it out or help them do so. Glue the olive trunk to the olive page. If you have access to real olive leaves, invite them to glue the leaves to the olive trunk. If not, just cut some out of green paper. For the olives, we used fresh olives that the kids squished and they thumb printed the juice onto their paper for their olives. You could use purple dyed water or paint to make yours. See the full tutorial here.
To make the pomegranate page, invite your child to use a q-tip to make dots with red paint on the pomegranate template.
Once you’ve made all the pages, simply staple them together and ta-da, you now have a wonderful kid-made Seven Species book to use for Tu B’Shevat exploration and review!
Hint: We used the finished book for our Tu B’Shevat Seven Species Tea and it was fabulous! I’ll share more in a post tomorrow!

Finished & Loving It!

There were so many things I, and my kiddos, loved about this book. I love all the different art methods and techniques we got to use. I also love that now we have a book that captures the seven species in such fun and special ways. It served as a wonderful exploration of this special aspect of Tu B’Shevat and also serves as a great review now and in the future.

The book has the same sentence, just changing out the fruit, on each page. This helps early readers who are practicing their reading. There’s a simple and easy flow to help build their confidence.

We used so many different techniques that the kids really felt like there was something new each day they started a project. They knew it would come together as this book so they understood there was relation and connection between the crafts, and the fruits, which is so helpful to their learning about the seven species as a whole.

I shared all the page-making in action through posts and reels on Instagram–come take and look and see how much fun the kids had making this Tu B’Shevat Seven Species book!