We went berry picking last weekend and the kids absolutely loved it! They loved running around the plants and searching for the most ripe berries to pick and to put into their baskets. Of course they also loved sampling all of their pickings and bringing loads of yummy berries home with them.
I decided to try to bring some of the fun of berry picking home with us, and to do our own version of searching for berries in our own backyard. We had all of the fruit baskets from our day at the berry farm, so we used them to collect different colours of play balls around the garden that represented different fruit. Ethan decided that the red balls were strawberries, the blue balls were blueberries, the orange balls were peaches and the green balls were grapes.
Ivy started picking up berries before I even got a chance to put them all around the backyard. She was so excited to start filling up her basket and found loads of berries without any direction from me at all.
Ethan's challenge was to find just a specific type of fruit to put into each basket, so that he was searching for colours of balls and focusing his attention a bit more. Of course he found it easy, but it did slow him down a bit and give Ivy a chance to pick up some balls for her basket.
Then Ethan took all of the berries, his and Ivy's, emptied out all of the baskets and sorted them each into their individual baskets, counting them as he put them in.
Ivy's final task was to pour out all of the baskets, put balls back into the baskets, then pour out the baskets and put balls back into the baskets...I think that you get the idea! She could have sat there playing with those balls and baskets for ages, it was such a great activity for encouraging her to play independently as it's something that she loves to do with her toys but now she had more purpose.
The kids both loved playing berry picking at home, it's a great activity to give them as a starting point for inventing their own games and playing on their own outdoors.
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