Strawberries are one of the most refreshing and popular fruits out there. And berries are so good for us too! It’s likely that strawberry season is starting or even in full swing in most places in the US. How fitting it is that May is National Strawberry Month! Since strawberries are so delicious and so available right now, why not celebrate them this month? We can use strawberries both for treats and for learning activities! So let’s look at some fun ways to learn with strawberries.
Cooking of course
So the first thing we want to do with strawberries is to eat them! But we can help our little ones learn even with eating strawberries. All of the prep work provides wonderful fine motor skill practice for our kids. So let your kids help with the slicing and chopping. Strawberries are soft enough that you don’t need a sharp knife to cut them. But if you would like to teach knife skills with a sharp knife, strawberries allow for learning good technique because of their softness as well.
Then you can make all kinds of treats with strawberries. Of course, the berries themselves are a treat, so your child can enjoy the berries that they chopped, or they can just eat the whole berries.
Berries and yogurt is another simple treat. Freezing berries to use later is really simple too. And fruit kabobs are so fun while working on fine motor skills as your child threads the fruit onto the sticks. Another simple idea is to make a fruit pizza.
And of course, there are so many more involved ways to cook with strawberries. You could make pie, jam, sauces, ice cream, and so many more lovely strawberry treats.
So do as much or as little as you want to. But do enjoy some strawberries with your little one!
Strawberry Art
Here’s another way to learn with strawberries. Use them for art!
Make some strawberry stamps. Just slice a strawberry in either direction to create a fun stamp to use. The juice can be the ink, or you could dip the flat part in paint to create even more designs.
Build a strawberry with pom-poms! Use red and green pom poms to make a strawberry on paper, or glue them together to make a 3-D strawberry shape.
Use paints for all kinds of strawberry crafts! Do some finger painting to paint a strawberry. You can even use fingerprints to create your strawberry. Or paint rocks to look like strawberries. If your child really loves strawberries, use fabric paint to make strawberry t-shirts.
Or maybe you could decorate your home in a strawberry theme. Use red and green streamers, maybe even balloons, to decorate in strawberry colors!
Strawberry science
Did you know that you can use strawberries to learn about acids and bases? Strawberries are actually acidic, so you can cut one open, place it into baking soda, and see it fizz in reaction!
Here are some other fun, scientific ways to learn with strawberries. You could learn the parts of the strawberry – kids are always amazed that the fruit is the little black dots and the stem is the big red part. Or you could learn about all the ways that strawberries are good for us. Lastly, you could learn how strawberries grow. You could do this either with books or by going strawberry picking and looking at the plants, or both!
Strawberry Math
Last up in our fun ways to learn with strawberries, we have math activities. Strawberries are great for counting. We can count how many we are picking or how many are in a container. We can also sort strawberries by size or by color. Yes, they’re all red, but they can be many different shades of red depending on their ripeness. We can have our kids measure the length of the strawberries. Or if you’re cooking with strawberries, you can help your child measure strawberries or other ingredients for the recipes.
As you’re trying out ways to learn with strawberries this month, try learning the sign for strawberry from our free Signing Time Dictionary. And we also have shows that include strawberries over at My Signing Time. Check them out here!