Salad Bowl Fruit Sorting

    Use a large salad bowl with plastic fruit, shake them up and have the children name the vegetable or fruit ( it's color too! ). Then the children sort them into corresponding colored plates. The small size of the fruit and vegetables allows great practice for fine motor / pincer grasp as well.  Sorting fruit and bowls can be found in the Lakeshore catalog.
 
 

    Using  large photo picture cards with fruit and veggies ( these can be either teacher made or commercially available,  we made ours by cutting up two inexpensive photo books),  have the children pick cards, name the fruit or vegetable and match the card to the same card placed on a display rack. (We use a separate board for fruits and vegetables to teach the distinction between fruits and vegetables.)  We emphasize the concept of finding the picture that is the "same" in this language lesson.

    Children use the same photo cards shown above to "find the object that does not belong"  in a set of four.  Children with higher language skills should explain the reason the one item does not belong to that particular set.

    Using the book, "Turnips For Dinner" (see literature page), we had the children taste test small bites of turnips and decide if they were "yummy" or "yucky". This activity works well with other popular children's  literature books,   such as   "If You Give a Moose a Muffin"  and "Green Eggs and Ham" etc.

    We like to provide lots of opportunities for play interaction to help develop social language.  This unit always provides these great opportunities when we set up our yearly "Store".  We ask parents to get involved by sending in empty food containers.  We provide plastic fruits and veggies,  cash registers and shopping carts.  Some years our store is very extravagant,  but sometimes it is as simple as putting together a few tables as you see below. The children love this activity either way.

    Make sure you check out the teacher made software for this unit.  It was made to support these  language concepts. (See software page.)