Surprising Tastes at Children 1st @ Syston

Our book of the month is Handa’s Surprise by Eileen Browne which tells the tale of what happens when Handa, who lives in an African village, sets off with a basket of seven delicious fruits, one for each of her friends. She’s unaware that some crafty animals are intent on stealing the fruit. The story fills the children with anticipation as the fruits disappear.

As we shared the book with the children, they began to ask questions about the various fruits that are mentioned. A fruit tasting session was called for!

The Peter Rabbits loved this hands-on activity and chatted about the different fruits we could see such as orange, banana and the green avocado. They were fascinated by the “black seeds” in the papaya. The children handled the fruit and talked about the spikes on the pineapple and the brown fur on the kiwi fruit.

The Peter Rabbits were keen to taste all of the fruits and did really well with exploring the new ones. They seemed to enjoy them all, but banana and pineapple were the favourites.

They also enjoyed identifying the various fruits from the Handa’s Surprise story sack and matching them with the real fruits on the table. This led us on to talking about the animals in the story. The children used the fruit and the animals as props when they retold the story.

Well done Peter Rabbits for being so adventurous and trying the new fruits in our tasting session.