The boys and girls have been talking about different tropical fruit including a coconut and a pineapple! The conversations led us to a story called “Handa’s Surprise”. Together we watched the story on a smartboard and listened to the story read by Alison before we acted it out! We learned new names for animals and fruit that come from Africa. We even looked for Africa on our big map!
Some of the boys and girls have heard this story before and were fantastic at recalling the characters and events from the book – for example, that at the end of the story, the basket was full of oranges!
D: “Zebra is taking the orange!”
SB: “There are three fruit in the basket now.”
C: “The giraffe likes pineapple.”
I: “The parrot liked the passion fruit.”
G: “There are no fruit in the basket now!”
J: “That’s “Handa’s Surprise”! She’s got a basket of fruit on her head!”
A: “Monkey took the banana, look!”
J: “Handa stays in a hot country, because we don’t have elephants here.”
Some of the boys and girls said they have never tried or seen some of the fruits from the story, so we decided to go on a trip to Tesco. We bought a few different kinds of tropical fruit and tasted them in the nursery, what a fantastic idea!
G: “There’s juice in the coconut, I can hear it!”
J: “I think there is milk inside this shell.”
G: “My daddy tried to open a coconut with a knife but he couldn’t because it was too hard!”
C: “I like the watermelon the most.”
E: “The pineapple is jaggy.”
R: “Watermelon is heavier than the pineapple.”
Some boys and girls had a brilliant idea…
O: “I can put a basket with fruit on my head too!”
Well… I think it would be great if we could try this next week! We are looking forward to seeing how far we can go with a basket of fruit balancing on our heads!
If you would like to hear “Handa’s Story” at home with your wee ones, click on the picture below:
