The School of Life

One of my biggest beliefs about children’s learning is that there’s so much natural learning that happens from just doing life and including them in daily life.

My mum is visiting from Singapore at the moment and she LOVES looking at fruit trees. So my MIL invited us to their property here with many fruit trees in the backyard including orange, mandarin, pomelo, lemon, fig, mango and pomegranate. From just picking a few pomegranates for my mum to bring back to Singapore, we ended up nearly picking the entire tree bare and filling up 3 huge bags of these gorgeous fruit. Miss 15mo got in on the fun too by helping us to pick those that had fallen onto the ground.

It was such a wonderful opportunity to talk to her about where fruits originally come from, for her to see the variety of fruits that grow on trees. If she was older, I imagine talking to her about the process of how these fruits end up in our supermarkets, comparing how some fruits have many seeds like a pomegranate as opposed to a mango with only one seed.

When we went home, we all worked hard around the table opening up these fruits to get all the seeds out and packed into small individual freezer bags to be frozen for making juice, having a snack or adding to a salad. Miss S could see the work involved before we could enjoy the fruits (pun intended) of our labor. She really enjoyed tasting them and kept asking for more! She also spent some time arranging the seeds into different patterns as she ate.

For older children, I imagine using these as inspiration, prompts and provocations for art activities like observational drawing or painting, or perhaps creating a beautiful sculpture/masterpiece using loose parts. A mandala perhaps? I mean look at the vibrant colours, the intricate details and patterns on the inside. Don’t they just inspire creative juices to flow?