See field notes about this activity

Name of Activity: Apples.

Category:. Me and My World

Props: Three very different varieties of apples (like Macintosh, golden delicious, crabapple--maybe even a yellow one, a green one and a red one); plastic knife, plates, and napkins

Your Role: Travel guide and historian

Directions: Place each apple on a separate plate. Ask your child to descry e to you how each apple is the same and how each apple is different from one another. Cut each apple in half. Ask your child to smell each apple. Then ask your child to take a bite of each apple. Make sure that your child has finished one apple before he takes a bit of the other. Ask your child to try to discriminate by sight and by taste among apples. Then, encourage your child to finish his or her favorite.

Goals for You: Your job is to help your child focus on the apple at hand: the way it looks and the way it tastes. Sometimes it may be hard for children to verbalize the differences among apples, so it's your job to help him or her talk about sweet/tart, hard/soft, firm/mushy, even cold/warm.

Goals for Children: Even if your child responds to this activity merely because of its food focus, certainly you've stimulated his or her sense of taste. Knowing that apples and their tastes are great can be the beginning of a development of the sense of taste,sight, and touch concerning food. Later on, these children can begin to verbalize about the apples, when and if their vocabulary expands as does their discrimination.

Possible Strategy:

What to say "Look at these apples. They're all apples but each one is a little bit different from the ones. Tell me how they are the same and how they are different. Let's look inside and see if they look the same and maybe even smell the same."

What to do Help your child focus on the shape, size, color of the apples. Point out both similarities and differences.

Possible Shaping:

What to say "Really smell them. Taste one and then the other. Is one harder to chew. Does one taste sweeter? Maybe they all taste the same?

What to do: It's important to know that your child may not have the vocabulary to talk about these differences, even though he or she can perceive them. Let him or her focus on the sense qualities. Words are not always important.

Possible Ending:

What to say: "Okay, now eat the one/ones you like best."

What to do: Allow your child to finish the apples.

Material on this site created by Helane S. Rosenberg, Ph.D. and Yakov M. Epstein, Ph.D. in conjunction with their forthcoming book titled Play for Success. All material on this site is copyrighted and may not be reproduced or cited without written permission of Helane S. Rosenberg, Ph.D.. Dr. Rosenberg is Associate Professor of Education at the Graduate School of Education of Rutgers-The State University, New Brunswick, NJ. Dr. Epstein is Professor of Psychology in the Faculty of Arts and Science of Rutgers-The State University, New Brunswick, NJ. He is also Director of the Center for Mathematics, Science, and Computer Education of Rutgers University.

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