Kids Activities With Cranberries
Cranberries show up on Thanksgiving dinner tables every year, but some kids might not know much about these bright berries. Introduce kids to cranberries by facilitating activities that allow them to interact with the berries. These activities are appropriate for groups of children at school or families at home.
Other People Are Reading
-
Spoon Race
-
Cranberries are some of the most durable berries because of their thick skins. Kids will get to know this as the cranberries repeatedly fall during a berry race. If there are lots of kids, divide them into teams for a relay race. The children should stack cranberries on a spoon and run to a set point and back to the starting line. Whenever a cranberry falls off the spoon, the child has to stop and place it back on the spoon before continuing. Decide on the appropriate number of cranberries based on the size of the spoon and the age of the kids.
Holiday Garlands
-
The bright color of cranberries provides bold decoration for the home around Christmas. Kids can make garlands by threading a needle with a piece of fishing line or waxed dental floss and stringing cranberries and plain popcorn on the garland. It helps to pop the popcorn a couple hours previously so it has time to cool. Kids can experiment with making different patterns of popcorn and cranberries on the garlands. Use the garlands to decorate a Christmas tree, banisters or mantles. Leave them outside for the birds to eat after Christmas.
-
Cooking Lesson
-
Cooked cranberry sauce exhibits some interesting properties of cranberries, including their bright color and the pectin in their skins. A parent should help the child heat 2 cups of sugar in 1 1/2 cups of water until the sugar melts. After the child stirs in 4 cups of fresh cranberries, he should watch them change. The berries will float, burst, turn the water red and eventually turn into a thick sauce.
Cranberry Math
-
Kids can use cranberries as helpers for math skills. Preschoolers who are learning how to count can practice counting how many cranberries are in a group. Children can practice visual estimation by putting a large quantity of cranberries on a flat surface or in a container and estimating how many there are. Count the berries to see how close the estimation was. Kids can also use cranberries as counters to practice addition, subtraction, multiplication and division.
-
References
- Photo Credit Cranberry - Cerise image by ParisPhoto from Fotolia.com
