Pineapples: activity ideas 5-7 years

Activities

Here is a set of activities provided to work alongside the Online Field Trip about pineapples. The intention is to inspire children to want to learn more about pineapples, how they are grown and the journey they take from the farm to the fork.  The activities can all be done independently - you can pick and choose whichever is most appropriate or interesting for your purposes. Use the Photo Pack and the Glossary of Terms to support learning and teaching throughout.

Ensure parental/guardian permission has been sought prior to the tasting of any foods and that you are aware of existing food allergies and intolerances (wheat, gluten, dairy etc.).

What is a pineapple?

• Place a fresh pineapple in an opaque bag/container so the children cannot see what is inside. Ask the children to take turns putting their hand in the bag and describe what they can feel. Note down some of the words used to describe what it feels like (these are likely to include spiky, heavy, large, rough, bumpy, knobbly, waxy leaves). See if anyone can guess what the object is.
• Show the children the pineapple. You may decide to have several pineapples available and pass them round for them to hold and feel. Alternatively, use a selection of pictures from the Photo Pack. Talk about the texture, appearance, weight, size, colour and shape.
• Generate discussion about pineapples and what they already know about them – for example, What is a pineapple? Where do they grow?
• Establish that pineapples do not grow on trees. Explain that they are the fruit from a plant in the family called ‘bromeliads’ (see Photo Pack). Have they seen/eaten pineapple before? Have they had foods and drinks containing pineapple? (e.g. yoghurt, pizza, jam, cake, juice) Discuss the different ways in which pineapple is available (e.g. dried, fresh, tinned – in chunks, rings, fruit cocktail, and as juice).
• Let everyone taste some pineapple.
• Use the Did You Know? cards to learn/revise a few interesting facts about pineapples. You may wish to make multiple sets of cards and laminate them. Suggestions for use include these:
• Fill a pineapple box (from a local supermarket/store) or a similar container with Did You Know? cards.
• Use the cards as a model to create your own Did You Know? cards. Find out some more interesting facts about pineapples and share them with the class as above.
• Together create a class book about pineapples, or create mini-books from the Did You Know? information for the children to read and share at home.
• Ask the children to learn some interesting facts about pineapples and present them during a class assembly.
• Make multiple sets of the cards and use them to play ‘FactSnap’ or ‘Fact Pelmanism’.
• Ensure that the children know that the word ‘pineapple’ was previously used to mean a pine cone – point out that a pineapple looks a little like a pine cone.
• Ask the children to complete the dot-to-dot. They can use the accompanying fruit outlines as templates for creating their own fruity dot-to-dots.
• Explain to or show the children that once pineapples have been picked, there are processes that make some of the pineapple products we all like to eat – for example, canning, juicing and drying. Encourage them to create a display of pineapple and pineapple-related products. Ask the children to create a 2 poster/collage showing the different ways in which pineapples are eaten, including canned and dried. Canned products that do not contain added sugar or syrup are recommended for inclusion. See the section headed Pineapple and 5 a Day.

Tropical fruits

• Explain that a pineapple is a tropical fruit, which means that it grows in a very hot climate. The tropics are the areas either side of the equator where it is generally hot all the time, so there are not four seasons as we have in the UK. Instead there tend to be rainy and less rainy seasons. Use the Pineapples World Map to help pinpoint the tropics. Explain that there are many other tropical fruits.
• Play Tropical Fruit Match. Prepare two copies of the game, which shows the names and pictures of some tropical fruits. Cut out a set of pictures and place them in a bag.
• Ask a child to pull out a picture, describe the fruit and find the name by matching it to the correct one on the chart.
• Alternatively, in pairs or small groups, play a game in the same way as traditional dominoes, called ‘Fruitominoes’, matching either a picture to a picture, or a picture to its name.
• Alternatively, use multiple sets of the cards to play ‘Tropical Fruit Pelmanism’ or ‘Tropical Snap’.

Pineapple skin and shape

• Inspect a pineapple together. You may wish to use a magnifying glass. Talk about the waxy, spiky top, and the grey-green, stiff bromeliad leaves or ‘crown’. Explain that the family of plants called bromeliads are characterised by thick, stiff outer leaves. Tell the children that pineapples don’t need much water to grow, and one of the reasons for this is that water doesn’t evaporate easily through the outer leaves.
• If appropriate, explain that you will try growing your own pineapple plant later by planting the top of a pineapple. Note together the segmented skin – what shape can they see? [hexagon] Explain that although we think of the pineapple as one large fruit, it is really a collection of lots of small berries, each one the fruit of an individual blossom positioned round a central core – hence the multiple hexagonal segments. You may like to ask the children to count and compare the number of segments in a number of pineapples.
• Tie this in with work on tessellation. Together explore and discuss how and why different shapes fit together. Try producing wax crayon rubbings of the skin of a pineapple.
• Link this with work on the properties of 2D and 3D shapes – for example, hexagons and hexagonal prisms. Look for patterns/shapes in other fruits and vegetables – for example, cut across an apple and note the star shape inside, you could also try this with a melon or cucumber. Extend this to look together at nature as a whole – for example, snowflakes, snail shells, pine cones and seed heads.
• To introduce reflective symmetry, give each child a paper/card regular hexagon, or get them to draw round a template or draw their own hexagon. Encourage them to see how many lines of symmetry a hexagon has by folding the shape accordingly [6 lines of symmetry]. Use other shapes to make and test predictions of the number of lines of symmetry – for example, regular octagon, regular heptagon, regular pentagon, square. See if the children can create a pineapple with one or more lines of symmetry.
• Think together about where else you may see hexagons in nature. Examples include a honeycomb, giraffe skin, tortoise shell and the Giant’s Causeway see (Photo Pack). You may wish to challenge some of the children, so ask them to try making a pineapple shape by tessellating the hexagons provided. They may need to cut some of the hexagons to fit round the edges. They may create the top of the pineapple in any way they wish. You could get them to use the hexagons to create pineapple-inspired patterns or a different style of pineapple. Ask the children to experiment with tessellating hexagons alongside other shapes.
• Create a display of facts about pineapples. Each child finds out and writes a fact on a hexagonal card, ready to be tessellated and displayed.

Where do pineapples grow?

• Use the World Map Poster to locate some of the countries where pineapples are grown. Ask the children to locate the UK and name some of the other countries. You may wish to provide each child/group with a copy of the map and/or a blank version of it. The children could copy/trace the map and/or research or add on other countries and facts about those countries.
• Remind the children that pineapples are a tropical fruit and grow best in hot climates. They are native to South America.
• Explain that commercial crops of pineapples are grown in Costa Rica, Thailand, the Philippines, Brazil and Mexico; and that pineapples also grow in such places as Australia and the US state of Hawaii. See if the children can locate these countries on the map. Encourage them to highlight their locations in relation to the UK. Ask them to find other foods/packaging from these countries and use these (or representations of them) to create a display.
• In order to provide more context for the Online Field Trip and help the children to understand more about the Republic of Costa Rica, use the Republic of Costa Rica Pictures as a prompt to generate discussion about one of the main places where pineapples are grown. Discuss what they already know about the Republic of Costa Rica, and about any types of food associated with, produced or exported from there (e.g. bananas, coffee). You could try out some Costa Rican recipes in the classroom.
• Use the Republic of Costa Rica Pictures as the basis of a class mini-guidebook to the republic. Encourage the children each to find out something more about the country and add it to the guide.
• Get the children to learn some Spanish. Display a few simple words and phrases in Spanish to help them:
• piña – pineapple
• trozosdepiña – pineapple chunks
• rodajasdepiña – pineapple rings
• ¡hola – Hello!
• ¡buenosdías – good morning!
• ¡buenastardes – good afternoon!
• porfavour – please
• ¡gracias – thank you!
• ¿cómo estás – how are you?
• si - yes
• no - no

Grow your own pineapple 

• Pineapples don’t need much water in order to grow. One of the main reasons for this is that they have super-thick, tough leaves, through which water doesn’t evaporate easily.
• Tell the children that it is possible to grow pineapples in the UK. In fact, in the 18th century there was something of a national obsession with them, and pineapples were grown in hothouses and so-called ‘pineapple pits’.
• Try growing a class pineapple by cutting the top off one, removing all the flesh (otherwise it may cause the plant to rot) and putting it in a large pot and keep it in the classroom window. It may take as much as two years for the plant to bear fruit – and it may not bear fruit at all. There is plenty of information about this online, for example:

• The children should watch the pineapple-related videos on the Pineapple Online Field Trip before undertaking this activity.
• Referring to the research and learning the children have already done by watching the videos on the Eat Happy website, discuss what they have learned about how pineapples grow and how they get from the farm to the fork. Suggested questions include these:
• Where in the world are pineapples commercially grown?
• How do pineapples grow?
• What do pineapples need in order to grow?
• How are pineapples harvested?
• Why are pineapples good for you?
• Use the Get the Juice resource to test pineapple knowledge. Share it as a whole-class text or read it together in groups. Use the accompanying questions as an aid to discussion. Alternatively, ask the children to re-read the text and answer the questions independently or in pairs, either by writing down the answers based on the text, or by matching the correct answer to the corresponding question.
• Create your own information sheet about pineapples.

A brief history of pineapples

• Use The History of Pineapples poster to provide a brief outline of the history of pineapples.
• Ask the children to research other facts and create their own pineapple timeline for display.
• Alternatively, create your own class potted history of pineapples.

Pineapple preparation 

• Pineapple is quite tricky to prepare but delicious to eat!
• Watch the video in groups or as a class. Print the accompanying stickers on to self-adhesive paper for all participants. 
• Ask the children to make or create a pineapple dish at home and draw / take photos of it to bring into school. Here are a few suggestions from the Tesco realfood website:
• There are other recipes available at www.letsgetcooking.org.uk. 

Pineapple and 5 a day 

• The recommended amount of fruit per day is two portions (2 out of your 5 a day; the rest are vegetables). What is recommended is also variety, so if you have two portions of fruit, they should be two different kinds. Show the children what constitutes one portion. Here are some examples:
• 12 chunks (sections of pineapple ring) of fresh pineapple
• 1 glass (150ml) of unsweetened pineapple juice (juice counts as a maximum of one portion a day, even if you have more than one glass – this is because juice contains less fibre than whole fruits and vegetables)
• 1 fresh, medium apple
• 1 fresh, medium banana
• 2 kiwi fruit
• 1 handful of grapes
• half a fresh grapefruit
• 2 handfuls of blueberries
• Fresh, frozen, canned (with no added sugar/syrup) and dried fruit all count.
• Talk about the notion of ‘5 a day’ and generate discussion about the different fruits and vegetables eaten by the class.
• Look at an example of the eatwell plate. If the children haven’t seen it before, explain that the plate includes the different sorts of foods that make up a healthy, balanced diet and that it is divided into sections to show the best proportions of each food group.
• Explain that pineapple is a good source of Vitamin C too. Vitamin C is essential for:
• healthy hair, skin, bones, cartilage, teeth and gums, and to keep our immune system strong (which helps prevent infection).
• supporting iron absorption, which helps keep our blood in good condition.
• normal energy and the reduction of tiredness and fatigue.
• Pineapple is also a source of manganese, which is required to protect cells and bones.
• Keep a class record of the different fruits eaten by class members each day.