How to Teach Fruits to Kindergarten Kids

Video Transcript

"Any new idea or item can be taught to young children through repetition. For example, to teach children about fruit, you'd want to use a variety of materials in order to do so. Talk to your local librarian about books that have to do with fruit. One of my favorite examples is a series of books called "How Are You Peeling" in which the author uses fruits and vegetables and all organic materials to create his characters, and then discusses emotions. Now although this does may not teach exactly about fruit, it's a wonderful resource that you can use after the children have already learned and identified the fruit that you're teaching. You'll want to use pretend fruit in your classroom that the children can use to sort the fruit by characteristics. This would include the size, the shape, the length, the color, the texture. You'll also want to make sure that you integrate real fruits so the tell children are able to experience the fruit. How does it taste? What does it feel like? How does it smell? Give them as many hands on opportunities as you're able to. A great resource that I would use when teaching fruit to young children would include obtaining a number of grocery advertisements to have the children cut out the pictures of the fruit and create a collage. The collage can be fruits that are orange, fruits that are red, fruits that are round. Decide whatever distinguishing characteristics you'd like them to sort by or simply just have them look through and find any pictures of fruit that you can find. One of my favorite resources to use when teaching a new topic to children is something called a K W L chart. The K in the KWL chart stands for what we already know, the W stands for what we would like to learn or what we'd like to know, and the L in the column stands for what we've learned through our process. When using this chart in the classroom, you'd want to sit down with the children and first have them brainstorm all the things that they already know about the topic, which is fruit. And you would write that in the first column. Next, you would want to tell the children, ask them "what would you like to know about fruit?" and write their responses in the middle. You'll then take the time to present the new item, or the fruit to the children. Read a number of story books, bring in the hands on materials. Let the kiddos to have a chance to explore and play and when that time is done, come back to the carpet and have them think about what they've actually learned, and that will want to match up in the column. After you're done filling in the learned, go back to the W column, what they'd like to know. See if there are any questions that are still lingering that were not answered. Take the time to answer those for the children."