www.parentchildeducation.com

Skip to main page content.

Search This Website










 


Taste Testing Apples
(part of the Apple Unit)

girl tasting apples

Any lesson that involves food will capture the attention of your child and having an opportunity to be a food critic has a definite appeal to it (no pun intended).


Taste Testing Apples


Materials:
A selection of apples - you can use the same apples from the sorting activity.
pencil or crayons
activity sheet for tasting apples PDF
activity sheet for smelling apples PDF
glyph activity sheet with a variety of questions about apples PDF

This is a great opportunity to talk with your child about what he thinks makes a good apple. parent tip Brainstorm. Writing down the words your child comes up with to describe the apples. You might ask:

  1. What do you like in an apple? Some examples he might give would be: how shiny they are, what color they are or if they look nice.
  2. Do you like to eat anything with your apples?
    If he is unsure of the question, you can add,
    1. Do you like apples with peanut butter or cheddar cheese?
    2. Or do you prefer a candy apple (like the ones at a carnival) or caramel apple (like the ones at a cider mill)?
    If your child is totally tapped out of suggestions or doesn't know how to respond, you might give him some suggestions. Some may be very silly:
    1. Do you like purple apples? or
    2. Do you like apples dipped in mustard?
  1. Let your child choose an apple he likes from a selection. You might choose to have a wide variety of apples available or just 3 different kinds.
  2. Use his criteria to pick the best apple. When he has selected an apple, ask him why he chose it.
  3. Have him sort the other apples based on his criteria. The apples could be picked based on: the prettiest, shiniest, juiciness, color, biggest, smell, etc. You can also have him rank them from biggest to smallest, and sweetest to sour. Record his findings on the activity sheet PDF.
  4. Let your child take a good whiff of each apple. Does one have more of an aroma then another? Does it smell good? Rate the apples by their smell and record it on the activity sheet PDF.
  5. Now that he has analyzed the apples, it's time to taste them. You can do a blind taste test where you cover his eyes or cut off the skin of the apple so your child can't see which one he is tasting. Or, you may just cut the apples into bite size pieces with the skins on for your child to sample one at a time.
  6. Have your child record his findings on the activity sheet PDF if he really liked it, it was okay or he didn't like it at all.
  7. This is a great time to just get your child's input. Listen to what he has to say, children always come up with amazing things.

top

Assessment

This activity is appropriate for an informal assessment. With your guidance your child will fill out the activity sheets. If he needs more than a little guidance on how to read a graph table and how to mark it, you will need to go over the activities step by step. As he becomes more familiar with graph tables, he will be able to fill it in on his own.

October 18, 2008

top