Fruits & Veggies

Take your child with you to the produce section of the grocery store or better yet to a farmers' market.  Ask for your child's help in locating the items on your list.  This list should include all of the fruits and vegetables you will need for your fine motor project and science experiment.  Make sure to engage your child while searching.  For example, "Now we need to find the strawberries.  What color is a strawberry?"

Photo:  http://www.fortscott.com/local_events.php

Reading Skills:
Once you get home with your produce, read a couple of the suggested books below:

Food Play by Joost Elffers and Saxton Freymann (no text)

A Fruit Is a Suitcase for Seeds by Jean Richards and Anca Hariton 

Eating the Alphabet: Fruits and Vegetables from A to Z by Lois Ehlert

Ask your child if they can tell you the difference between a fruit and a vegetable and then offer them an explanation:
"Fruits and vegetables are commonly confused. The technical differences between them are clear. Scientifically speaking, a fruit is a matured ovary of a flower that has seeds. A vegetable, on the other hand, is any other edible part of a plant such a root, leaf or stem. From a culinary point of view, however, the differences between fruits and vegetables are much more complicated [and tend to revolve around the fructose content and sweetness of the produce]."  Source:  http://www.ehow.com/about_5348257_difference-between-fruit-vegetable.html#ixzz1ka3PJz3v

Fine Motor:  
Make stamps out of fruits and vegetables.  Produce that work well for this project are apples, bell peppers, lemons, squash, celery, lettuce, onions (if you can stand the tears), and star fruit.  Talk about which are fruits and which are vegetables.  Of the above suggestions, the celery, onion, and lettuce are vegetables.  Bell peppers and squash which are usually classified as vegetables are technically a fruit!  You will also need a few different colors of washable tempera paint poured into broad shallow dishes and paper.  Cut the produce to make interesting stamps.  For example:  Apples, and peppers can be cut in half long ways or horizontally; potatoes, lemons, onions, and starfruit are best cut in half horizontally; and celery and lettuce make a beautiful floral-like prints when an entire bunch is cut horizontally close to the base.  Demonstrate how to dip your homemade stamps into the paint and then press them onto the paper to make prints.   Source: http://www.scholastic.com/teachers/lesson-plan/harvest-prints

Photo:  http://blogs.babycenter.com/author/mlebaron

Math Skills:
Buy a container of dried pumpkin seeds.  (Note:  a pumpkin is technically a fruit!)  Help your child to count out 10 seeds.  Take a thick paper plate and fold it in half.  Place the seeds in between the two folded sides of the plate.  Staple the plate's edges together so that the seeds cannot escape.  Allow your child to decorate their shaker with markers, glitter, streamers, stickers, etc.  (If you opt to do streamers, attach them to the inside prior to securing the edges of the plate.)  Once the shaker is decorated (and if applicable has dried), have your child shake it to some music.  Shake, Shake Shake!!! 

Photo: http://www.freekidscrafts.com

Science Experiment:
What scent is this?  Gather four or more different fruits with different scents (e.g., lemon, grapefruit, apples, strawberries, etc.). Blindfold your child, then place the object close their nose.  Ask your child to smell it and try to identify what it is.  Source:  http://www.123child.com/UBB/showthread.php?6329-fruit-preschool-lesson-plans.

Snack:

Frozen Banana Pops.  Cut a banana in half. Insert a popsicle stick in one end of the banana and freeze. If you want to get fancy, drizzle honey over the banana and roll the banana in Rice Krispies prior to freezing.  

Photo:  http://bakingbites.com