FRUITS AND VEGETABLE FIELD TRIPS, DOABLES, and
FAMILY “EDIBLE PLANTS” JOURNAL
Do you have a street market nearby? Check it out and see what fresh fruits and vegetables are available. (That could be a good place to find a few new things to add to your Still Life doable.)
Perhaps watch this video first and see if any of these unusual fruits show up in the market. Mark on a world map where they are found:
“13 Extraordinary Fruits Around the World” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I05PXP5hysQ (5:51)
If the market isn’t too busy, perhaps the stall owners will talk with you about:
Where their produce came from, when it was picked, and how to prepare it
If you should store it in the refrigerator or out on the counter
How you will know when it is ripe.
Maybe they will let you hold it, and you can see how heavy it feels, if the skin is smooth or bumpy or prickly, and how it smells.
If you are feeling really ambitious, you can take notes along the way. When you get home, copy or tape them into a notebook that can become your family’s “Edible Plants” journal, (like Katniss Everdeen’s family’s illustrated book in The Hunger Games – which is not for young children). The children can do the illustrations, or you can find pictures on the Internet that they can cut out and paste or tape into the journal.
You would need:
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An 8½” x 11” bound notebook
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Optional:
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Colored pencils or markers or watercolors and/or
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Access to the Internet and a printer
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Tape and/or glue.
Other offshoot and related doables:
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Pay visits to a grocery store or greengrocer and check out the fruits and vegetables. Some games you can play while there:
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Count the different colors of peppers
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Count how many different kinds of lettuces or apples there are
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Find the biggest single fruit there (e.g., watermelon?), or the littlest (e.g., a grape?)
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Find the weirdest looking fruit or vegetable
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See how many fruits or vegetables you can find that start with the letter “A” (or B, or C…)
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See how many of the fruits and vegetables the child can name without reading the description
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After picking out a few of the fruits and vegetables, guess which will weigh the most in the grocer’s scale.
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Play the five senses game with the fruit: see what it feels, smells, tastes, and looks like. And sound-wise: does it make a crunchy or squishy or slurpy sound when you eat it?
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Find out what the difference is between a fruit and a vegetable. This video might help: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DTK-uWx_VQo (4:8)
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Travel out to local farms where perhaps you can pick your own corn or berries.
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Visit grocery stores over several months – from spring into fall maybe – and keep track of when certain produce becomes available. Those notes could go in your family journal too.
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And of course, if you have garden space or a sunny counter where you live, you could grow vegetables or herbs to eat.
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Try these videos:
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Here is “Peppa Pig – Gardening” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V-4J_0vpszM (5:15)
And this video is about plants, including their edible parts: