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FRUIT & VEGETABLES THEME
Don't forget to visit the Apple Theme for more fruity ideas!

CRAFTS:

Carrot Painting
Use carrot tops and celery leaves to paint with.

Bean Sprouts
Grow various bean sprouts in class and let the children eat them when they're finished growing.

Fruit Prints
Cut apples or pears in half, dip cut side in paint, and make prints. 

Fruit Dyes
Provide several fruit juices that make dyes. Have the children drop the juices through an eyedropper onto coffee filters.

Fingerprint Watermelons
Supply the children with black non toxic ink pads and red watermelon shaped paper. Show the child how to make fingerprints on the paper, using only one finger at a time. Their fingerprints will represent the seeds.

Fun with Watermelons
A simple but fun art project to go along with your watermelon day is to give each child 1/2 of a paper plate. I used small torn pieces of construction paper- green and red. Have them glue green paper around the crinkled edge of the paper plate then fill the center in with the red. After eating your watermelon save some seeds to glue onto your paper plate melon. These are cute and look very realistic.

Fruit Necklaces
Supple the children with a variety of different fruit shaped craft foam. You can punch holes in the foam, and supply the children with yarn to thread the fruit shapes.

Fruit Loops Necklaces
Supply the children with Fruit Loops and yarn. Have the children thread the Fruit Loops onto the yarn to make a necklace.

Grapes
Supply the children with green and purple circles to create a bunch of grapes. Use a black marker to create the vines.

Grape Fingerprints
Supply the children with red, green and purple non toxic ink pads and paper. Show the child how to make fingerprints on the paper, using only one finger at a time. When finished, add vines with a black pen.

Grow some veggies!
Even though it's winter, you can grow simple veggies inside. Take a dish pan and put some gravel in the bottom. Fill with soil. The best items to grow are lettuce, radishes and herbs. Green bean seeds will also grow quickly. Keep in a sunny window and keep moist.

Mystery Paint
Have the children paint using lemon juice.  Let the painting dry overnight. It will be invisible.  Place each child's paper under several layers of newsprint.   Lightly iron over the paper with an iron set on high (no steam) until the artwork appears.  Ask children to guess why the pictures appeared.

Making Fruit Leather 
Go to the store with a produce department.  Get some apples and bananas.  Return to the meeting area.  Give the children the experience of may can their own fruit roll ups.  Almost any fruit will work the apples and bananas are good choices cents these two fruits are always available.  You'll need a jelly roll pan, 18 x 14 and some heavier plastic sheets such as mylar or food grade 4 mil.  plastic.  If you use ordinary plastic wrap you will need to tape it to the edges of the pan for Apple he will need for washed and cored apples, one tablespoon of lemon juice and one tablespoon of honey.  Put an oven set out lowest temperature leave the door ajar.  Keep in oven for four to five hours.  If they can be picked up easily in the corner and leather is slightly sticky, it's done.

Potato Block Printing
Cut shapes into potato halves (make them raised). Use to block print.

Sprout Tops
Place a NON TREATED white or sweet potato or carrot top into water and see if it will grow into a plant. Carrot will sprout "hair."

Seeds
Allow the children to glue the seeds from a orange to a piece of paper.
Variation: Let the children glue the seeds to orange paper shaped like an orange.
Variation: Have the children tear bits of white paper to represent the seeds.
Variation: Have the children color a paper plate orange, then glue real seeds or paper seeds to the plate.

Seeds Collage
Supply the children with a variety of seeds from fruits. Have them glue the seeds onto a piece of paper.

Veggie Paint
Buy a variety of vegetables (just firm ones, nothing squishy) and slice them in various way (horizontally, vertically, diagonally). Cover the table with newspaper. Put assorted colors of tempera paint in Styrofoam meat trays. Give each child a large sheet of white construction paper and let them print-paint any way they like with the veggies.

Watermelon Art
Materials: Green and red construction paper, Watermelon seeds, 
What to Do: Give each child a circle cut out of green construction paper and a slightly smaller circle cut out of red construction paper. Have the children glue their red circles on top of their green ones. Then let them glue watermelon seeds all over their red circles.

Watermelon Magnets
Cut red styrofoam plates into fours. Have children cover edge of each section with cut up squares of green tissue paper for the rind. Save watermelon seeds and have children glue five or six seeds on their slice of watermelon. Attach a magnet on back and they have a cute summer refrigerator magnet.

GAMES & ACTIVITIES:

Apple Taste Test
In the Fall there is usually a large variety of apples to choose from. 
Do a taste test.  Notice the different colors, shapes and smells of apples. 
Make a chart showing favorites.

Fruit Hop
Place fruit shapes on the floor. Have the children hop from one fruit shape to the next.

Fruit Seat Markers
Cut out and laminate big fruit shapes to be used as seat markers for the children to sit on during story and circle time.

Grape, Grape, Raisin!!!
Played like "Duck, Duck, Goose" except the children will say "Grape, Grape, Raisin".

Is This Lemonade?
Have each child juice one lemon half.  Collect the juice in a pitcher. Let each child dip a clean plastic spoon into the juice for a tiny taste. Ask them if this is really lemonade.  Then, add sugar, water and ice to the pitcher and try taste testing again.

Lemon Exploration
Ask your students (in advance) to bring in 2 or 3 lemons each. During meeting time, cut a lemon into slices, one into wedges, and leave one whole.  Let the children check out the lemons and verbalize what they see, smell and feel.  List the words offered onto a large lemon shaped cardboard cutout.  Offer some untouched wedges for brave tasters.

Ripe and Ready
Take a trip to a fruit orchard.  That the children have the experience at picking a fruit from the tree.  What appears on the tree before the fruit comes?  How do we know when the fruit is ready to pick?  Bring some fruit back to your meeting area.  Cut the fruit into slices peel if necessary and that each child add raisins for eyes, nose and mouth.  Sprinkle coconut on the top for hair.  They can enjoy the tree by eating it.  How them describe what it cases like.  What does it smell like?  Note: beware of allergies

Strawberry Toss
Make three strawberry shaped bean bags out of red felt.   You can dot them with fine-tipped sharpie or if you have more time, you can embroider speckles on it before sewing them together. I used yellow thread. You can find a bushel basket,for the children to toss the bags into,   at a craft store like Michael's.

The Berry Best Class
Bulletin board display idea -Make a basket filled with strawberries. On each strawberry, write a child's name or glue a student's face cut from a photo.

Mini Greenhouses
Materials: 2 clear plastic cups, tape, fruit seeds, water, paper towels, marker
Directions: Write the name of the type of seeds on a piece of tape and also the child's name to place on a set of cups. Let the child wet the paper towel in the water, fold it and place it in the bottom of one cup. Place the seeds on top of the wet paper towel. Put the second cup over the first and tape in place on one side.  Place the "greenhouses" on a sunny windowsill.  If too much moisture accumulates inside the cup, lift the top cup for a while. When the seeds have sprouted the children can replant in a pot with dirt. 

Vegetable Sorting
Buy an assortment of fresh vegetables and let the children sort them by color, size, texture, Etc..

Vegetable Tasting Party
Cut up a variety of vegetables, including some unusual ones the children have probably not tasted before. Allow them to taste which ever ones they want. I provide tooth picks for the older children to pick up their veggies.

Veggie Hunt
Hide toy vegetables in sand or in the sensory table and have the children dig them up.

Vegetable Graph 
Make a graph of what vegetables the kids like and dislike.

Vegetable Book
Use construction paper folded in half for a book. Have the children glue pictures of vegetables in it.

What's Inside a Pumpkin? 
If possible, go to a pumpkin farm or else octane to pumpkins, one large in one small.  Have the children count the grooves on the pumpkins.  Compare the number.  Feel the skin and the stem.  Describe how they feel.  At the top often that the children scoop out the insides.  What does it feel like?  What do they see?  Are the seeds of same size in both pumpkins?  Do they have the same number of seats?  You can wash the seeds and toast them on a cookie sheet, sprinkle with salt and garlic salt.  Save a few seeds to plant in the spring.  You might also carve your pumpkin, or cook it and help make muffins.  Note: beware of allergies
 

SONGS:

Have You Ever Had An Apple
Have you ever had an apple, an apple an apple?
Have you ever had an apple
And heard it go crunch?
Have you ever had an orange, an orange..Etc..
And heard it go slurp?
Banana...... go mush?
(think of other fruits and the noises that go along with them)

I Like Oranges
(Tune:'Three Blind Mice')
I like oranges. I like oranges.
Oranges are a fruit. Oranges are a fruit.
They are not animals, tools and such.
They are are good fruit that I like so much.
So, I eat oranges. I eat oranges.
An orange is orange. An orange is orange. It is not red.
It is not purple nor pink nor gray.
An orange is simply not colored that way.

Picked A Strawberry
(tune: "Clementine")
Picked a strawberry,
Picked a strawberry
That was growing
In the sun.
Then I washed it,
And I ate it,
And I picked another one.

The Watermelon Patch Song
(tune:  Are you Sleeping?)
Watermelon, (Make a circle with your arms.)
Watermelon,
On the vine, (Curve hands and arms beside body.)
On the vine,
Sweet and red and juicy, (Rub your tummy.)
Sweet and red and juicy,
Please be mine! (Palms together as though pleading.)
Please be mine!
Watermelon, (Make a circle with your arms.)
Watermelon,
Thump, thump, thump, (Make a thumping movement with thumb and middle finger.)
Thump, thump, thump,
I think you are ready- (Point, resting finger on your temple.)
I think you are ready-
Big and plump! (Make a circle with your arms.)
Bug and plump! 

The Good Food Song
(Tune: "Old MacDonald Had A Farm")
Vegetables are good for me, EE I EE I O
And so I eat them happily, EE I EE I O
(Children take turns naming vegetables that they like)
With a carrot, carrot here, and a carrot, carrot there
Here a carrot, there a carrot
Everywhere a carrot, carrot.
Vegetables are good for me, EE I EE I O.

Vegetables 
(tune: Mary had a little lamb)
We are pumpkins, big and round,
Big and round, big and round.
We are pumpkins, big and round,
Seated on the ground.
(then try the following) We are string beans green and fine.....growing on a vine.
We are onions round and white....we make soup taste right.
We are carrots, orange and long...help us sing the song.
We are cabbage green or red....see our funny head.
We are corn stalks tall and straight...don't we just taste great!

Vegetable Song 
(Tune: "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star")
Carrots, Peas, and Broccoli,
Vegetables are good for me.
For my snack and in my lunch,
Veggie sticks are great to munch.
Carrots, Peas, and Broccoli,
Vegetables are good for me.
 

STORIES:

Have any good stories? Let us know!
 

FOOD SUGGESTIONS:

Apple Crescents
2 cups peeled, cored and chopped apples
3/4 cup 2 Tablespoons flour
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
2 (8 oz.) packages refrigerated crescent rollsbr> Glaze--1/2 cup confectioners sugar and 2 or 3 Tablespoons hot water
In bowl combine apples, sugar, flour and cinnamon.   Separate crescent rolls into 16 triangles.  Spoon mixture in center of each triangle.  Fold 3 points over filling like an envelope, sealing edges.  Place on cookie sheet, 1 inch apart.  Bake at 350 degrees for 20 to 25 minutes, or until golden brown. Beat confectioners sugar and hot water in bowl until well blended. Drizzle over warm crescents.  Makes 16.

Apple Lips
2 apples
1/2 cup peanut butter
1/2 cup mini marshmallows
Core and slice apples into 8 slices.  Spread with peanut butter, top with marshmallow "teeth".

Apple Snacks
Mix 1 C. of sour cream with (PI) C. of brown sugar.   Provide apple slices or strawberries for dipping.

Banana Orange Shake
6 oz frozen orange juice concentrate
2 bananas, peeled
3 pints vanilla ice cream, softened
6 cups cold milk
Liquefy orange juice and bananas in blender.  Place ice cream in gallon mixing bowl and add fruit mixture.  Beat with mixer until blended.  Continue beating and gradually add milk.  Beat until smooth and frothy.

Banana Treat
Cut bananas into chunks, dip in vanilla yogurt and roll in wheat germ or crushed cereal or granola.

Fruit Salad Invite
Make fruit salad and invite the parents for snack. Children can cut the fruit into small pieces (be sure to cut up grapes as they pose a choking hazard).  Ask parents first about allergies; strawberries are a common one.

Frozen Fruit Treat
1 3/4 cups strawberries 
1 large can crushed pineapple
5 bananas (cut in cubes)
12 oz frozen orange juice - concentrate
1 1/2 cups water
Mix ingredients together.  Freeze in small paper cups. Serve partially defrosted.  Children love this nutritious treat!

Make orange juice
Have at least one orange per child. Cut them in half and let the children squeeze the juice into little cups.  Provide plastic juicers (can be found at the dollar store) and bring in an electric juicer if you have one.  Discuss the various ways to get juice from fruit.  Which way is easiest? Hardest? Why? Etc.

Raw veggies (served with sour cream or ranch dressing):
Cauliflower, celery, broccoli, carrots, radishes (may be a little spicy for younger children), lettuce, green onions, Etc.

Vegetable Soup
This works well in a crock pot, put meat in early (in the morning before kids arrive). Use frozen or fresh chopped vegetables, let kids decide how much of each vegetable goes in the pot. Cook on high for 2-3 hours, serve with crackers.
 

TIPS/NOTES:

Field Trip
Take a field trip to the grocery store or farmers market.