Hey guys,
This is one of those easy & very practical activities you can do with your kids at home so they can learn about fruits and vegetables.
This activity is a sorting type but it is also for vocabulary enrichment or other language learning.
And not to mention that this is food and nutrition education. You can use this to learn your kids that veggies and fruits are important to their health, that they are full of vitamins and that natural food is the best choice we can take to keep our bodies healthy and well.
In a few words, this is what we actually did.
SO the black beans I meant to be "the soil". I used some of our wooden fruits and veggies toys, throw them in the box and then my son (2yr and 2mo that time) had to sort them into fruits and veggies.
You can try out this activity:
- to introduce them to fruits and vegetables or
- to consolidate these notions
- or maybe you can use it as an opportunity to teach your children some new words in a different language, like we did.
Almost forgot, this activity is a sensory activity too because the beans have the role of stimulating a young child's sense of touch. Sensory play encourages learning through exploration and curiosity. We are in love with sensory activities:x:X
I named every fruit and vegetable both in Romanian and English. For example: "Look, this is an ORANGE!. How do we call it in Romanian? PORTOCALA. Is this a fruit or a veggie? What basket should we put her in? Can you tell me what color is it? Or shape? and so on...
We also had one book to look at and use it as reference.There were two pages where fruits and veggies were already sorted, each type on a page, as you can see down below.
I asked questions, I gave answers, I came up with some new details for example: Fruits can be found in the trees or the bushes or in the vine. Veggies can grow in the soil etc...
Learning process comes smooth within this activity. It's relaxing and enjoyable, it doesn't requires to much attention. It is an activity where kids can ask their own questions based on what they observe, but they can also provide detailes about what they see.
They can analyze shapes and colors on fruits and veggies, find some similarities, making connections.
Even though we didnt do it this time, it is best to expose in addition some real fruits and veggies too so the kids can examinate them. Or try this just with real foods like oranges, apples, bananas, kiwi, pear, carrot, celery, peas, pepper, tomatoes, etc
For this activity, we used another set of wooden fruits and veggies we have.
These are much bigger and much appropriate to reality. These wooden toys imitate very well how fruits and veggies really are.
You can see how beautiful shaped are they and what nice colors have too.
They can be cutted in half because they are actually 2 half pieces which stick together with a small velcro. This activity is great for fine motos skills development, concentration and attention.
They came together with a wooden knife and a wooden board.
You can put your child sort the fruits and veggies by color or maybe shape? Long (carrot and banana), round (tomato, orange, kiwi).
If you dont have wooden/plastic fruits and veggies you can print some and then color it. Thouth the best is to replace these with real fruits and veggies you have at home.
Thank you for reading! I would appreciate a feedback on this and fell free to mention if there's anything you could add to it.
missdeli