Teaching fruit is refreshing because most students enjoy eating fruits. A unit on fruits and vegetables is usually embedded in our Intro to Culinary Arts course. If you can access fresh, local fruit, you can teach seasonal foods with the fruits and vegetables unit. You can also consider incorporating nutrition and discuss the vitamins and minerals in many types of fruit. Lastly, you can model limiting waste by purchasing local and seasonal foods.
Fruit Worksheets for Middle School and High School
We usually start with PowerPoint presentations when starting a new unit. They can be controversial, but they can help provide background information for your students before you dig into practice activities such as worksheets and projects. These presentations include names of the fruits, a fruit picture for each, and information about the fruit can be powerful tools in sparking interest, refreshing their memory, and providing schema on fruits and vegetables.
Play a Game! The Fruits and Vegetables Around the Room Game is a fun way to help students identify fruits and veggies. This fruit worksheet has 36 fruit and vegetable cards to tape around your classroom. It also includes 4 versions of BINGO sheets that have just names of the fruits and vegetables.
How to Play:
- Students move around the room, searching for the cards
- They fill in the BINGO board
- The first pair of students to complete 5 in a row with the number or letter on the card wins. You can also have them fill in the entire board!
- It is also differentiated for special education or elementary students and has cards with the names on them.
- An extension activity- have them switch BINGO boards and play again or have them fill in one nutrition fact about the fruit or vegetable.
Check out our fruits lesson, which includes a presentation, guided notes, and questions. They also include video slides with relevant videos that help students understand the content. These also reinforce vocabulary words that you want your students to remember.
Fruit Research Activity– this is a fun way to get your students to learn more about fruits. They research where they are grown, what dishes can be made with them, their vitamins and minerals, and their seasonality. Students choose fruit names to research, and you can have them present their findings to the class. These worksheets are a great way to decorate your classroom as well!
Fruit Recipe Ideas for Food Labs
Working with fruit after learning about the fundamentals is essential to solidify students’ understanding of a topic like fruit. Here are some food lab ideas for your family consumer science, life skills, or culinary arts classes:
- Fruit smoothies– have students browse different fruit smoothie recipes to explore ideas before the lab. They can also create on paper their ideal smoothie and present them to the class.
- Fruit popsicles- have students blend fruit and pour it into these disposable popsicle sleeves. Even middle and high school students love these!
- Yogurt parfaits– you could have students brainstorm their parfait before you begin making them! Include yogurt and toppings such as granola and fruit as ingredients, and discuss the MyPlate food groups covered in the parfait.
- Fruit tarts– here is a recipe for fruit tarts from scratch.
- Mango salsa– here’s a good recipe for this.
- Fruit carving– you would usually need tools like this.
- Strawberry jam– if you use pectin, you won’t need as much sugar, and can teach about the properties of pectin. This recipe allows you to adjust the size of the batch.
Elementary Fruit Worksheets
Check out our fruit and vegetable matching activities and this color-by-code fruit worksheet that can get your students thinking about MyPlate food groups. Students love this activity; it helps them learn the names of fruit and vegetable and the difference between the 2 categories.
Fruit Recipe Ideas for Cooking with Young Kids
Fruit is a fun way for kids to learn about healthy eating and get used to working in the kitchen. You can incorporate fruit with a MyPlate lesson plan or as a food group. Here is our kid’s cooking camp activities resource that includes everything you need to teach nutrition and fruit to your students!
Recipe ideas for having students work with fruit:
- Fruit kabobs– this is fun because students create their patterns. You can also give them mini marshmallows to put on the skewers. Some fruit ideas include strawberries, watermelon, grapes, apples, melon, blueberries, bananas, and more!
- Fruit salad– have students practice their knife skills with lettuce knives or butter knives to cut up fruit to make a delicious salad!
- Apple Nachos:
- Ingredients: Apples, nut butter (such as peanut butter or almond butter), granola, raisins, shredded coconut.
- Instructions: Assist the students in washing and thinly slicing the apples. Let them arrange the apple slices on a plate. Using a spoon, help them drizzle nut butter over the apple slices. Sprinkle granola, raisins, or chocolate chips, and shredded coconut on top. Enjoy the apple nachos as a delicious and nutritious snack.
- Fruit dip– have students make a fruit dip and cut apples, strawberries, and other fruits to dip into the recipe. Recipes include a yogurt fruit dip, cream cheese dip, chocolate dip, marshmallow dip, or caramel dip!
Other fun activities to help kids learn about fruit:
Fruit Tasting:
- Organize a fruit-tasting session where students get to try a variety of fruits. Provide a selection of different fruits, including some lesser-known or exotic options. Please encourage them to describe each fruit’s taste, texture, and color. Discuss their preferences and ask them to rank their favorites.
Fruit Research Projects:
- Assign each student a specific fruit to research. They can gather information about the fruit’s origin, nutritional benefits, varieties, and fun facts. You can encourage them to create a poster, PowerPoint presentation, or short video to present their findings to the class.
Storytelling and Literature:
- Read books or stories that feature fruit as a central theme. Engage students in discussions about the characters, settings, and moral lessons associated with the stories. You can also encourage them to write their own fruit-themed stories or poems. Some fun elementary books you can read aloud or find audio on Youtube that discuss fruits include Eating The Alphabet, My Magical Foods, and Fruit Bowl.
Culinary Arts Lesson Plans Your Students Will Love!
Check out more of our culinary arts lesson plans and ideas, including our full middle school and high school curriculum. We also have a free culinary arts pacing guide scope and sequence! Our curriculum includes detailed lesson plans, slideshows, guided notes, questions, engaging activities to reinforce learning and recipes!
