Play School: Fruits and Vegetables

In honor of the harvest, this week in Play School we learned about Fruits and Vegetables.

Concepts: Where fruits and vegetables come from, different kinds of fruits and vegetables

Game/Activity: I made a magnetic pin-the-apple-on-the-apple-tree game for Tempe's Apple Party last year, and so we started off our morning by playing a few rounds. Then, to go along with one of our books, we made mosaic carrots. I cut simple carrot shapes out of a cereal box, painted white glue on them, and let the kids cover them with torn pieces of orange construction paper.

Books: Oliver's Fruit Salad by Vivian French; Ten Red Apples by Pat Hutchins; Vegetables, Vegetables! by Fay Robinson; The Apple Doll by Elisa Kleven; Growing Vegetable Soup by Lois Ehlert; Eating the Alphabet by Lois Ehlert; and The Carrot Seed by Ruth Krauss.

Songs/Fingerplays: Way up high in the apple tree, ten little apples smile down at me! I shook that tree as hard as I could. Down came the apples! Mmm, they were good!

Snack: I was babysitting little B and his sister A, so instead of just having a snack, we made vegetable soup for lunch. Tempe and little B helped me. Along with our vegetable soup, we tried a new fruit (pomegranate) and had apple juice.

Field Trip: After naps, M, little B, and A, and me and my kids hooked up with T and her son little T and went to the Farmer's Market. We had so much fun trying all the delicious samples (peaches, yellow watermelon, kettle corn, whole-wheat pancakes and buttermilk syrup, chocolate chunk cookies--yum!) and looking at the handmade crafts. I love going to the Farmer's Market! When we lived in Laramie, Jason and I went every week. Laramie closed off two whole blocks of University Avenue and vendors came from all over the region. We always saw people we knew--Jason's classmates from law school, moms of the kids in my preschool class, people from church. It was one of my favorite things about living in windy Wyoming.