Sensory activities with fruits

Sensory activities if used judiciously can work as that perfect kids activity when dealing with kids from multiple age groups.

It all started when my 4 year old mocked my 2 year for mistaking peeled and chopped pears for apples. In my toddler’s defense the two crucial elements she needed to identify an object were removed.  Apple- big, round and red. All she has in front of her were white squishy pieces of something. Then she used her sense of taste and of course she knew those were apples. This led to a super fun kids activity. I can’t even call it an “activity” since it was more of a talking, feeling and exploring kind of afternoon  But boy oh by did they love  it!

I made this sensory bin simply using the fruits I hand on hand and construction paper.

I had four sections. A whole fruit, A sliced piece, skin and  a few pieces for tasting. When the kids came over, they were wide eyed and squealed. My toddler ofcourse went for the strawberries and started just eating them before I had a chance to even tell them what we were doing.

This kids activity created a sensory explosion since it stimulated all the five senses. We observed the fruits and looked for similarities and differences.

This sensory activity is a very hands on kids activity which involved lots of communication and exploring with the kids. So sorry not many action shots.

Here are a few topics we touched. My 4 year old actually came up with a cool game.

Find the fruit with the sense of touch

She first took a good look at the fruits and then closed her eyes and had me hand her over a fruit. Using just her sense of touch she will name the fruit. 

Sometimes she has to use the texture of the skin and sometimes she has to use the shape and size to guess the fruit.

Find the fruit with the sense of taste

We also did the other way and closed our eyes and used our sense of taste to name the fruits. This was great when tasting apples and pears.

Find the fruit with the sense of smell.

We explored the fruit by simply smelling the fruit and  the skin as well.

Talked about the skin.

What fruits can be eaten with their skin? The kids tried to taste the orange and kiwi with their skin on and obviously went “ewww” On the other hand apple skins were extremely tasty. We picked out the fruits with different skin color and the flesh color. Watermelon would be a wonderful example for this.

Talked about seeds

We compared all the seeds. Strawberry is the only fruit in the bin with seeds on the outside.

Vocabulary

I encouraged my preschooler to describe the fruits. How do they feel? How do they smell? Great for developing vocabulary.

Math

My preschooler got in a bit of math there with halves, wholes and fourths.

Toddler 

My toddler had tremendous fun tasting the skins and making faces! She also got to name the fruits  and their corresponding colors. 

I placed a whole fruit and a slice fruit piece on her hand and we observed the two.

So yay for play based learning.  We got all that by “just” hanging out in the backyard with a box of fruits and enjoying the warm weather.

Edit: Obviously cut the orange the other way..

Thanks for reading

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