Pick a Fruit and Bring It
What you need
- a fruit bowl or basket they can reach
- their plate
How to do it
- At snack time, say their name and wait for them to look up.
- Say: 'get a banana and put it on your plate'.
- Let them go to the fruit bowl and choose one on their own.
- Next time, name a different fruit so they have to listen for which.
Why it matters
Naming one particular fruit from a bowl of several means they have to listen to the word, not just the routine, which is where genuine understanding shows.
What they're learning
- Listening for the word
- Choosing the one you named out of several is proper understanding at work.
- Holding two things in mind
- Get it, then where it goes, with a choice in the middle.
- Making it theirs
- Getting their own snack is a real job they can take pride in.
What to look for
Watch for them picking the one you named rather than the one they like best.
A tip
Children learning more than one language may understand some things in one language and some in the other. If an instruction lands better in their other language, that's their understanding, not a gap in it.
Make it easier or harder
Easier: only put one kind of fruit in the bowl
Harder: ask for a fruit they have less often
More like this
Browse
Everyday helper activities · Activities for 2 year olds · Toddler activities with a bowl · Toddler activities with a basket