To link in with this theme we have been sharing the story, ‘Handa’s surprise’ – a story about a girl who takes a basket of different fruit to her friend Akeyo. Unbeknown to Handa, a variety of animals had been pinching fruit from her basket, so when she arrived at her friend’s village, her basket was full of tangerines (you’ll have to read the story to find out where the tangerines came from!) Inspired by this story, we set up a story-themed tuff tray, using real fruit from the book; including a pineapple, avocado, tangerine, banana and mango. The children were able to explore this fruit, discussing size, colour and textures. We had some lovely descriptive words such as, ‘spikey’ ‘sharp’ ‘smooth’ and ‘squishy’ used.
Not wanting to waste our fruit, we were able to turn some of it into fruit smoothies on Friday. The children helped as we chopped up the pineapple and banana (we found pineapple very tricky though!), we then added juice, and blended the fruit together. Many of the children then enjoyed sampling their efforts.
With a somewhat ‘fruit-inspired’ week – we decided to explore this within craft too. On Tuesday we used broccoli paint-brushes to create art! We also made fruit inspired collages, and spent time cutting and gluing food images onto our healthy-eating plates.
The week hasn’t all been food related though! To encourage some of our more reluctant artists to the craft table, we’ve been making junk model cars using bottle tops as wheels – this led to some of the children wanting to then drive their toy cars through the paint, which enabled us to observe the tyre track patterns this made. We’ve also used sticks with the paint, having felt inspired by the story ‘Stickman’.
Ideas to continue this week’s fun at home: The children loved exploring some more unusual fruit this week, so why not take a walk around your local supermarket and look at the array of fruit and veg available? You could discuss size, colour, texture etc. – you could even have a go at making your own fruit salad or smoothies.