What food grows in the grasslands? This is a question from Lesson 13 Food topic from Going On Safari, week three Life On the Grasslands. The Grasslands have few trees and receive rain throughout the year so they can grow many crops like wheat, corn
Food on the Grasslands
Fruit
The third week of Going on Safari with Mother Goose Time is all about Life On the Grasslands. Lesson 13 is about food people and animals eat on the grasslands.
I’m not sure if there’s a better way to get a child’s attention other than to bring out some yummy looking food! Everyone wants to know what we are going to be doing.
I set out a pineapple, orange, bananas, coconut, papaya and mango.
They looked at the fruits, touched them and talked about them.
Of course they also picked out their favorites and asked if we could eat them.
So everyone watched while I cut them open and we talked about what we found inside.
Everyone enjoyed a plate of oranges, bananas, mangoes, pineapple, papaya and some shredded coconut. Unfortunately the papaya wasn’t very good. I mean, it’s winter in Wisconsin so…
Opening a Coconut
Since we had this coconut, we wanted to get it open! It’s fun to see what’s inside. Plus, we wanted to taste it. Honestly, it doesn’t taste like much but it was still fun!
Coconuts are interesting to look at and hold. It has a rough texture and when you shake it, you can hear water inside! We don’t see coconuts very often in Wisconsin so the kids were anxious to see what’s on the inside.
We are currently in a deep freeze in Wisconsin, so there’s no school. I had a third grader here for the day so she looked up how to crack open a coconut on her Ipad. She found out that you pierce one of the three spots on the end of the coconut. I used a drill to make a hole. Then we drained the coconut water into a cup. Everyone tasted it. It was okay.
You can’t really cut open a coconut. Instead, we put it in the oven at 350* for 10 minutes. After I took it out, sure enough, there was a crack! Then I could wedge a knife in the crack (very carefully!) and cut it open.
So here’s our opened coconut! We can cut out the meat and dry it in our dehydrator. See, I learned something new today too!
Handa’s Surprise
What an adorable story about Handa, a little girl on the grasslands, that takes a basket of fruit to her friend. It’s fun to see what happens and what the surprise is! I don’t have this book so I was glad to find it on YouTube. This animated audiobook version is very nice for kids to watch. I felt the story added a lot to our Life On the Grasslands: Food topic.
Little Letter Book: Cc
I love how Mother Goose Time incorporates all the necessary skills like concepts of print, letter and word recognition while working on self-concept within their themes. It makes for well rounded lessons.
We like our Alphabet Sounds letter tubs for learning our letters. They work in very well with our Mother Goose Time Little Letter Books.
Filling Fruit Baskets Game
Using the Pocket Cube and colored Link Strips, we played the Filling Fruit Baskets Game.
First, roll the Pocket Cube. Then put a link strip in the bowl with the same fruit.
The child identifies the fruit and matches it to the correct bowl. Continue to play until all the strips are in the bowls. Count to determine with bowl has the most.
Since there was no school due to the extreme temps, the seven year old counted all the sticks and then separated them into the bowls. She determined we had 57 strips with 9 strips in six bowls and three leftover. So there’s plenty of options for each child from the youngest to the oldest!
Safari Food Web
Who eats who? It’s kind of sad that a zebra or giraffe might get eaten by a cheetah or a hyena, but everyone has to eat something to survive!
This is a fun literacy rhyme relating to the safari food web.
“Zebra, Zebra, what do you see? I see a cheetah looking at me. Cheetah, cheetah what do you see? I see a lion looking at me! RUN!”
