Fruit Week

We had a really fun week studying fruit! We took a walking tour of our neighborhood to visit a crabapple tree, a fig tree, blackberry and mulberry bushes, and a plum tree. We examined our strawberry bushes in the back garden, which are making fruit for a second time this season.

We had a fruit scavenger hunt at the grocery store. I glued some pictures of fruits onto a sheet of paper, put it on a clipboard with a pen, and Thing One marked off each fruit as we found it.

Some of the books we read include:

Apples to Oregon by Hopkinson (very cute, this was a big hit)

Yes We Have Bananas by Hughes

The Apple Pie Tree by Hall

Beautiful Bananas by Laird (Thing Two really likes this one)

How Do Apples Grow? by Maestro

Jam and Jelly by Holly and Nelly by Whelan

Peach Heaven by Choi

Children's Book of Virtues (George Washington and the Cherry Tree) by Bennett

The Fox and the Grapes, Aesop's Fables

The Story of Adam and Eve and the Serpent

James and the Giant Peach by Dahl (the runaway hit by a mile. Friday we rented the movie.)

We checked out two CDs as well and really liked both of them. As in, I want to buy them. Billy Jonas What Kind of Cat are You? and Cajun for Kids! by Papillion.

We played a file folder sorting game called Fruits and Vegetables from http://www.filefolderfun.com/. I was able to fit this one onto half a file folder folded in half.

After learning about fruit grows and what makes a fruit a fruit, we examined some fruits closely with a magnifying glass, then our EyeClops Bionic Eye television plug-in microscope.

We made bread machine jam. This is one of those things I've been meaning to do since we got the machine eight years ago and never have done. So that was a fun experiment for me! We made biscuits Friday morning and ate them with our strawberry jam.


We tried a few new fruits and fruit products, including red bananas (very starchy like a plantain), plantain chips, pomegranate juice, and mangosteen juice. After the kids were in bed, I tried some Haagen Das passion fruit ice cream.

We cut an apple sideways to see the star. We were a bit disappointed that our apple star only had four arms! Our apple prints also turned out pretty poor. We could never get a good print.

The other big hit with the boys were two interactive games. The first was a poem about shaking an apple tree. I had Thing One hold two pretend apples in his hands and pretend to be a tree, and when I shook him, the apples fell down. The second was a poem about a worm crawling through an apple, and the boys took turns being the apple and the worm. The apple stood up with legs spread, and the worm got to crawl through the apple's legs. Of course, I took a turn as the apple too. The loved learning the song "Down by the Bay." They made up their own verses for the rest of the week.

Thing Two's activities this week included a big stack of cups. We stacked these, and I introduced Thing One to the "hide the toy under one of three cups and try to find the toy" game. Thing One also played a lot with our big bin of toy food, and our set of Melissa and Doug food cutting game.


We also made a fruit pizza for our Independence Day BBQ. It looks pretty here but the crust stuck terribly to the pan! I recommend lots of grease on the pan with this recipe!

Thing One is allowing me to choose next week's theme. I'm thinking about the Chesapeake Bay.