Activity Plan Mixed Ages: Making Fruit-Shape Kebabs

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Young children learn mathematical concepts best through hands-on activities. Help your child learn about shapes by making a sweet, healthy snack together.

What You Need

 

• Any type of fresh or canned fruit, such as grapes, apples, orange sections, bananas, pears, or pineapple chunks
• Plastic knives
• Small bowls
• Paper plates
• Bamboo skewers

What You Do Together:

1. First, cut the fruit into a variety of shapes. Your child can help by peeling and slicing a banana, cutting an apple into cubes, pulling grapes off their stems, or pouring out the canned fruits.
2. Together, sort the fruits into separate bowls and have a taste test. Talk about the different flavors and textures. Which fruit does your child like most? Least? Which are your favorites? Then sort the contents of the bowls into shape categories. Which are circles? Squares? Other shapes? Compare the shapes of the cut fruit with their original shapes.
3. Slide the fruit shapes onto bamboo skewers to create different patterns. As you do so, talk about the kinds and number of shapes you're each using and patterns you're creating. Cut new shapes from the fruits, such as half circles from banana slices or grapes, as you go.
4. Enjoy your snack together. Another time, try making vegetable kebabs with carrots, celery, green peppers, or other favorite vegetables. With any luck, your child will love these too!

More Ways to Learn

Shape a game. Together, draw shape patterns on index cards. For example, on one card, draw two circles and two squares. Then draw matching shapes on construction paper. Ask your child to help them out and match the cutouts to the game cards. Later, suggest that she find small items around the house, like coins or buttons, that she can also match to the card patterns.

Categorize your kitchen. Ask your child to help you sort the food in your cabinets or pantry. Let her group items in each category -- boxes, canned goods, spices -- by shape and size. Then create a system together for organizing them. This might inspire more rearranging around the house -- perhaps even in your child's room!

The Geometric World of Young Children
Geometry is one of the most natural and fun areas of mathematics to develop with young children. Clements suggests some ways in which educators can integrate geometry into early childhood classrooms. For more information about exploring math through manipulatives and shapes, see the sub-articles "Getting in Shape" and "What Children Already Know."

How Your Child's Math Ability Appiles to Real-Life Skills
How math, and its connections to everything, can help kids learn, understand, and think more deeply about the world

Activity Plan 3-4: Scrumptious Shapes
Children will learn about geometry by identifying the varying shapes of the food we eat.

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