Home Geography for Primary Grades · Lesson XXXI · Unit 7: Plants
31. Fruits
Goal: Your child names fruits that grow on trees, bushes and vines, knows what an orchard is, and writes a short composition about fruits.
You'll need
- A few fruits to look at and taste: an apple, an orange, grapes, berries
- A knife (adult) to cut the fruit open and find the seeds
- A geography notebook (any notebook kept just for these lessons) and a pencil
What's in the book
Questions about fruit trees, orchards, picking berries (blackberries have thorns), fruits that grow nearby on trees, bushes and vines, and their uses. The orange grows only in the warmer parts of the country. Then questions about which foods suit cold and hot countries. Write a composition about fruits.
The lesson, step by step
Trees that feed us
Read the first question.
Name some trees upon which grow things to eat.
Ask: What do we call such trees? (fruit trees) What do we call a place where many fruit trees grow? (an orchard)
Tree, bush or vine?
Ask: Which fruits grow near us? Which grow on trees? Which on bushes? Which on vines? Make three lists together.
Cut them open
An adult cuts the fruits in half. Your child finds the seeds in each one.
SayEvery fruit holds the seeds for new plants.
The orange
Read about the orange. Ask: Where does the orange grow? (only in the warmer parts of the country) Name other fruits from warm places. (lemons, bananas, figs, pineapples)
Berry picking
Ask the book's question: What makes it hard to pick blackberries? (the thorns)
Safety: only pick and eat berries an adult knows for certain are safe. Never eat wild berries you don't know.
Write
The book says:
Write answers to some of the questions asked in the lesson, so as to make a composition about fruits.
Your child writes three to five sentences.
Afterwards
Visit an orchard, a pick-your-own farm or a farm market in season.
Tip
The end of this lesson asks which foods suit cold and hot countries, in the way people talked about it in 1894. You can simply say that people everywhere eat what grows and lives near them, and that the far north has few fruit trees, so people there have long lived mostly on fish and meat.
Answers to the book's problems
Trees on which things to eat grow are fruit trees, and a place with many of them is an orchard. Blackberries are hard to pick because of their thorns. On trees: apples, pears, peaches, cherries, plums, oranges. On bushes: blueberries, currants, gooseberries (raspberries and blackberries grow on thorny canes). On vines: grapes, melons. Fruits are eaten fresh, cooked, dried, made into jam and juice. Oranges, lemons, bananas and figs grow in warm places. In very cold countries few fruit trees grow; the Inuit (the "Eskimos" of old books) of the far north have lived mainly on fish and the meat of animals.
Worked out for this site from the scan. If a number in your copy differs, trust the book.