Fruit Salad Salsa!

This week we take the At Home Magic Basket into the kitchen! It’s inspired by one of our favorite songs to sing and dance to at group time call Fruit Salad Salsa by Laurie Berkner. You can listen to it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xUyhAqnu3z8.

If don’t have fruit in the house this week or don’t feel like playing in the kitchen, you can also build on our collage skills from last week by creating a fruit salad salsa collage!

Once you’ve selected the fruit you’d like to use in your fruit salad salsa, take time to explore it with your preschoolers using the 5 senses. You can ask questions like, I wonder what color it is? How does it feel? Is it smooth or bumpy? Does it make a noise when you tap it or shake it? I wonder if it tastes sweet or sour? I wonder where this fruit is grown? Does your fruit have a sticker on it? If so, I wonder what letters or numbers you can spy?

To expand on the fun fruit exploration you could make a list of the fruit and write down your preschoolers responses.

Next wash your fruit. Preschoolers love water play! Fill your sink with water and give your fruit a bath. I wonder which fruits sink or float? Using frozen or canned fruit, drain it in a colander and give it shower. After you’ve rinsed and dried your fruit now its time to chop! Grown-ups can do the big chopping demonstrating good safety practices. Preschoolers can feel very agent in cutting soft fruits like bananas, kiwis, strawberries, or melon. Cutting fruit is great for developing fine motor skills. Counting together as your preschool pours, scoops, and stirs the chopped fruit into the bowl is a fun way to incorporate math skills. When your fruit salad salsa is complete you may choose to enjoy it on a tortilla chip for a mix of sweet and salty or on a cinnamon pita chip. Or maybe even in a bowl with a squeeze of lemon or lime juice and dash of honey.

After enjoying your fruit salad salsa invite your preschooler to create a recipe card so you can make it again. Have them dictate to you the ingredients and steps of the recipe. What fruit did we use? How many stirs? How long did it take us to make? I wonder what the first step was?

Enjoy! And remember, no pressure-have fun with it and tap into what makes it fun for your family!