Soft color wash fruits adorn notes of thanks to those who help support healthy eating habits.

• 1.

  What are some of your favorite fruits? Write a list of them with Crayola® Colored Pencils. Research nutrition information about each fruit. Compare the amounts of vitamins A and C, fiber, and other nutritional values with those of your friends' favorite fruits.

• 2.

  Draw large images of these fruits on construction paper. Make some fruit cut open, such as a kiwi with seeds, and others still with their peels on, such as bananas. Outline the edges of your fruit, and feature such as attached leaves, with Crayola Washable Markers. You might use one color for the skin or rind, another for the fruit, and still another for the core, leaves, or stem.

• 3.

  Cover your work area with newspaper. Use a Crayola Paint Brush to gently spread water from the marker outline to the center of the fruit, creating soft washes of color. Dry.

• 4.

  Add dimensional details, such as apple or watermelon seeds, with markers. If you save and dry real seeds from the fruit you eat, you can glue them to the card with Crayola School Glue for an extra touch of texture.

• 5.

  Cut out your fruits with Crayola Scissors. Fold construction paper into card shapes that fit your cut-out fruits. Attach the fruits with Crayola Glue Sticks.

• 6.

  Inside each card, write a thank-you note (or a request "please, could we have...") to a food-service worker at your school. National School Lunch Week in October is the ideal time. Others who might enjoy receiving Fabulous Fruits thank-you notes are fruit growers, produce market workers, refrigerated truck drivers, dieticians, and the person at home who prepares your meals!

Standards

• LA: Produce clear and coherent writing in which the development, organization, and style are appropriate to task, purpose, and audience.
• LA: Demonstrate command of the conventions of standard English capitalization, punctuation, and spelling when writing.
• LA: Report on a topic or text, tell a story, or recount an experience in an organized manner, using appropriate facts and relevant, descriptive details to support main ideas or themes; speak clearly at an understandable pace.
• VA: Use different media, techniques, and processes to communicate ideas, experiences, and stories.
• VA: Use visual structures of art to communicate ideas.

Adaptations

• Possible classroom resource: Fruit: Discover Series Picture Book for Children by Xist Publishing
• Students compose original thank you notes for cafeteria workers and extend their thank you notes to principals, school support personnel, teachers, etc.
• In teams of two, students share their thank you notes with a partner. Students make suggestions for editing and improving the thank you notes prior to delivering them to school staff.
• Invite a local dietician to meet with the class and discuss healthy eating habits. Prior to the visit, students compose questions for the visitor. After the meeting, students post learning to a class blog.
• As a whole class, students create a chart to show the fruits they have chosen to illustrate. Add the nutritious values for each selected fruit. The chart can be expanded to include vegetables and other foods.