This is our fifth week of Virtual Book Club Summer Camp and it is ANIMAL ADVENTURES WEEK! Each post will feature animal-themed activities and children's books. If you're not yet subscribed to our weekly camp emails, go here to sign up.
Since it is animal week... you're probably wondering why today's post is about strawberries. Keep reading to see why.
Have you read Don & Audrey Wood's book The Little Mouse, the Red Ripe Strawberry, and the Big Hungry Bear?
We LOVE the little mouse and he LOVES strawberries... so today we decided to pretend to be the little mouse 
and do a few strawberry related activities.
and do a few strawberry related activities. As a little mouse we...
1. Played a "strawberry seed" pick up game.
2. Practiced cutting strawberries in half and sharing "half with me and half with you."
3. Did a strawberry hunt and tried to keep the strawberry hidden from the big hungry bear.
To do these activities you need the following materials...
- chocolate chips/beans
- red and green cardstock
- scissors
- tape (to stick strawberry pieces together)
- plastic knife
- strawberries
- plate (or 2)
- tongs
- marker
- strawberry printable (optional)
1. Strawberry Seed Pick Up Game
For this activity you first need to make a big strawberry! You can either use the printable linked above or just hand-draw your own onto colored cardstock.
Next you need to cut up some cardstock into little cards. Write a number on each card 1-10 and put them all in a big pile.
Once your strawberry and cards are made... you can start playing!
Flip over a card from your pile. Read the number aloud. Add that number of "seeds" (chocolate chips or beans) to your strawberry using your tongs. These tongs
are a bit easier to use than the tongs we had, but both work.
Once you finish one card, clear off the strawberry. Tell your child they can be the Big Hungry Bear and eat a few chocolate chips... and then flip over another card and start again!
This is an excellent activity to work on hand-eye coordination and build fine motor skills while also practicing number recognition and 1:1 correspondence. Little ones could skip the tongs and just use their little fingers to pinch the chocolate chips and move them onto the strawberry.
2. Sharing Strawberries
My daughter's favorite line in The Little Mouse, the Red Ripe Strawberry, and the Big Hungry Bear is "cut it in two and share half with me and half with you" (or something close to that).
We decided to practice some cutting skills with our plastic knives and work on cutting strawberries in half!
We talked about how to hold the strawberry and knife while cutting. I was shocked to realize that my 5 year old didn't know how to cut with a knife very well. I had never shown him!
After a quick tutorial he was cutting strawberries in half like an expert. My two year old also had fun exploring with her (very safe) plastic knife and cut her strawberries into little pieces.
After the kids did some cutting, they gave a piece of strawberry to themselves and shared a piece of strawberry with each other!
3. Hide the Strawberry from the BIG Hungry Bear!
For this activity one kid pretended to be the BIG hungry bear while the other kid pretended be the mouse who was frantically trying to hide the strawberry.
The "mouse" quickly hid the giant strawberry and then the other child got to pretend to be the bear and hunt around for it.
We love hunts! (even when the toddler hides the strawberry in the same spot every time :))
Have you done any favorite strawberry activities? What about mouse or hungry bear activities?
Make sure to stop by tomorrow to see the other "animal adventures week" activities we are sharing and also head over to The Educators' Spin On It for their VBC Summer Camp featured post.
Also, don't forget to enter our "animal adventures week" giveaways from Melissa & Doug, Amy Mascott, Flatten Me, The Gruffalo, Chloe the Jumbo Jet, and Craftprojectideas.com. Go here for more details!
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I can't to do this with my 2 yr old. I'm LOVING your blog.
I LOVE this idea! My boys really enjoy using tongs for transporting things, so I know they would love this activity. We've been having such a blast at Summer Book Camp this year! Yesterday we had a Gruffalo themed day – went down a STORM!!!