Every few days, a newspaper bound in a long rubber band makes its way onto our porch.  If it’s not already soaked through with early morning rain, I half-heartedly flip through the stories and flyers {that make up the majority of the paper} so I feel a tiny bit less guilty about recycling it almost immediately.  This morning, however, when we found a bone dry paper on our porch, we decided to put it to use.

Gracen’s been helping me wash our produce and sort it into the different refrigerator sections for a long while now and often asks if things are fruits or vegetables, so I decided we’d use our grocery store flyers to play a little fruit and veggie sorting game.  

We gathered up a small piece of poster board, a ruler, some glue, and some scissors to start.  I drew a quick T chart while explaining that one ‘box’ would be for all the fruit pictures we found and the other would be for the veggies.  Grae shared with me one thing that she was certain was a fruit (an apple) and one thing she was certain was a vegetable (a potato) and we added little picture clues at the top next to the column headings.

Next we had a little chat about how we know if something is a fruit or vegetable…  While it’s kind of a complex subject filled with talk of flowers, ovaries, and plant accessory parts, I subscribe to the fruits have seeds theory when teaching kids (true story – avocados, peppers, and cucumbers are all fruits!)  It’s not a perfect rule because wee ones often don’t realize that things like bananas and blueberries have seeds, but it works for most things.

After adding a few little seeds next to our fruit heading, I began cutting pictures out of the flyers.  I’d pass one to Grae, ask her what it was, whether or not it had seeds, and if she thought it was a fruit or veggie, and she’d paste it in the correct box.

After a couple of times, she took things into her own hands… I’d pass her a picture and she’d say, “Dis is lettuce.  It no have seeds, so it’s a vegetable!”

When we’d used up all of the flyer photos, she took a minute to admire her project.  She was a very proud girl and immediately went to hang her poster on the fridge.

Later on in the day, after a big produce shop, Grae was helping me lay all of the freshly washed produce on the butcher block to dry.  Right away, I could see that she was putting all of the fruits on one side and the veggies on the other, so I grabbed a wooden spoon to act as a divider {and she grabbed her poster to add to the display}.  Instantly we had a real life sorting game.

These are her piles when she decided she was done playing.  The Chinese eggplant on the right is what she chose this time for our weekly fruit/veggie investigation, and though she’s not sure, her prediction is that it is a vegetable.  We’ll have to see when we open it up!  ☺

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