No-Mess Painting with Fruit

The fruit paintings add a splash of color to the Baby Bunny Room.

What can an infant in the Bunny Room do with leftover fruit? Paint with it, of course! After Tu B'Shevat, there were several pieces of fruit left over from our fruit exploration activities. The Baby Bunnies experimented with colors and textures during their No-Mess Painting with Fruit activity. The infants chose a fruit (lemon, avocado, or kiwi) to use. The teachers placed the fruit into clear containers (tennis ball containers but any sturdy container with a lid will work), added two colors of washable paint, and closed the lid. As the infants shook, pushed, or rolled their containers, they could watch the paint colors blend to make a new color. The fruit left interesting patterns on the paper and the Baby Bunny Room now has colorful new paintings on the art board. Can you guess which picture was painted by a lemon, kiwi, or avocado?

Our Tu B'Shevat Celebration!

Exploring fruits

Tasting fruits

Nature walk/Visiting the Trees

Planting

This week in the Duck Room, we did a variety of activities to celebrate the holiday of Tu B'Shevat! We began our week by exploring with a variety of durable fruits -- oranges, grapefruits, lemons, limes, coconut, and pineapple.  The children held, carried, rolled, and threw the fruits.  They explored with the smell, sight, and feel of these familiar and unfamiliar fruits.  We then experienced the taste of these fruits as well at our classroom's Tu B'Shevat Seder.  The children were able to taste many different fruits, some of which they had eaten before, and others that were new.  Almost every child enjoyed and asked for "more" of at least one new food!  Later, we also explored the idea of planting on Tu B'Shevat by giving the children an opportunity to work with potting soil and grass seeds.  The children "planted" by scooping and dropping both the soil and the seeds.  Finally, we took a nature walk in the ECC nature trail.  The children visited the trees and identified different trees (large and small), ran from one tree to another, touched them, hid behind them, and even sang "Happy Birthday" to the trees!

Baby Bunnies explore trees and fruit for Tu B'Shevat

Charlie reaches for a fruit from the basket. So many choices!

Today, the infants in the Baby Bunny room had an opportunity to learn about trees and fruit in their own way for Tu B'Shevat.  Although many of the infants are not ready to participate in the fruit tasting that occurred in some of the older classrooms, the Baby Bunnies learned about fruit using their senses of sight, smell, and touch. They explored with apples, oranges, avocados, bananas, limes, and kiwi which they will use for a painting activity later in the week.

A teacher placed an apple, a lemon, and a kiwi in front of Donatella to see which one she would pick. Donatella chose the kiwi.

Later in the day, the children took advantage of the beautiful weather and went outside to look at the trees surrounding the JCC. Some of the children touched the tree bark and held pieces of wood. At the end of the day, there were no tears!

Anna holds a piece of wood in her hand.