Time for Strawberries!

It is that wonderful time of year again when strawberries are out and ready to pick. Yeah! I have been going strawberry picking since I can remember and my husband and I have gone almost every year that we have been together. In that time we have moved from Portland, to San Diego, to San Fransisco, and finally back to the Portland area.

Needless to say we have gone to a lot of farms! :) We have really liked many of them but our favorite area to go picking is Sauvie Island. There are more than a couple farms such as the Pumpkin Patch (yes they have u-pick strawberries, as well as other berries later in the season). Kroger Farms which also has lots of u-pick, and quite a few others. This year we went to the Pumpkin Patch and picked until our buckets were full and our kids were done.

Strawberry picking is a great way to show kids how food gets to our plant from a farm in a more direct way that is visual and tactile. Plus it is an easy way to talk about colors, and different parts of a plant, as work on fine motor skills (using those fingers to get the strawberries off the plants).

Pattern Practice with Fruit

Okay who does not love fruit kabobs? I mean really what is not to love, fresh, healthy, pretty, tasty, I could go on and on. Recently we took the chance to make some fruit kabobs out of very simple ingredients and found that this is a wonderful way to work on patterns. 

Recognizing patterns and creating them is a very important skill to learn and it is something that preschools will usually be teaching children. You can make patterns just about anywhere with anything and it can provide a good source of entertainment too. What better way to work on pattern learning than using fruit (a healthy snack) and making a kabob. Not only will kids find this a fun and yummy activity but it will also help develop fine motor control and provide an educational experience. 

For these kabobs you could use any fruits that you have available and be as creative as you would like. We used grapes, apples cut into small chunks, and a pepino which has white and purple skin. We used popsicle sticks instead of skewers and they worked out just fine.  

Some ideas for this activity:

~ make a few skewers with some missing pieces of fruit and then have your child add the missing pieces in the correct order

~ allow the child to make their own pattern (that is what mine did)

~tell the child part of a pattern and have them create the rest on the popsicle stick

~draw out some pattern cards with colors of the fruit and have the children draw a card and create that card. 


What kind of pattern activities do you do with kids?