1. Tasting game

If you are fortunate enough to have natural fruits readily available, bring them in and play a blindfold tasting game.  Be careful to wash the fruits and your hands carefully beforehand and cut the fruits into small pieces.  You can give the children the black and white pictures to colour while  doing that. Alternatively, prepare the fruit in advance.  Blindfold one child and feed them a piece of fruit on a spoon.  The child must guess what fruit it is.   This activity is only suitable for small groups unless you have an assistant to help you get through the children faster.

2. Make a fruit salad

If you are fortunate to have the facilities to make a real fruit salad, it is always a popular activity.  Make sure there is plenty of fruit-naming as you put them in the bowl and eat them afterwards.

Once the fruit salad is made,  play any game, and each time a child has a turn, they eat a spoonful. However, you will have to serve them yourself in a separate dish as these days everybody is paranoid about germs, and you can’t be too careful with other people’s children.

3. Hot Potato 

Seat the children in a circle and hand out the different fruits at intervals around the ring.  Then, play music while children pass the fruits around the circle.  When you suddenly stop the music, the children holding fruit stand up, shout out the name of the fruit they are holding and give it to another child in the circle.  Next, start the music again and repeat until you feel you have had enough.

4. Chanting game 

First, have the children chant or sing these simple words: Bananas, oranges, apples, and pears – four times in a row.  The trick is to say the four lines in a sing-song type way. Have the intonation go up at the end of lines one and three and down at lines two and four.  It is better to make up a simple tune or use one you already know and put these words to it.

So, seat pupils in a circle with eyes closed.  One child stands outside the ring holding a fruit.  The whole group sing or chant the four lines while the child with the fruit walks around and secretly puts the fruit behind any child in the circle.  When the song or chant is over, everyone feels behind their back to see if the fruit is there. The one who has it jumps up and runs around the circle, trying to catch the child who placed it behind them.  The other child runs around the ring and sits down in their chaser’s place.  Repeat until as many children have had a go as is possible.

If you have a big group, cut the chant down to two lines and have a chasing session every two lines instead of every four to speed things up.

5. Would you like?

First, practise saying, “Would you like some milk?” in unison a few times.  Next, count the children in with a one-two.  Then, hold up a picture of the apples and count the children in again, but this time they must ask, “Would you like some apples?”  Have a go with each food picture.  This activity should take two to three minutes.

Now you are ready to play a question and answer game with music. First, play music while pupils dance around. Then, stop the music and hold up a picture card of one of the food items from the story.  Count the children in and ask the question with them.  If the children can do it on their own so much the better, you can answer them with, “yes, I would,” or “no, thank you.”