Taste Testing Apples With Kids

There is an amazing school garden at The Explorers’ elementary school. Lucky for me, I’m in good with the Booster mom who brings kids out to spend time in the space each week.

While her passion lies in the planting and harvesting of fruits and vegetables, mine lies in the chance to help the students connect with nature in other ways, too.

Given the timing, I thought learning a little about fall fruits was in order. So last week we tried taste testing apples with kids – knowing full well most of the kids probably hadn’t done anything like it before.

There really aren’t any rules here. The point of an apple taste test is for kids to learn more about apples – whatever that might be. If the kids discovered they liked the taste of apples, even better!

No matter how you choose to conduct your apple taste test, here are a few helpful hints:

• Choose your apple varieties appropriately. I chose to keep it simple with three different apples – red, green and yellow. (Seriously. That’s what the kids called them.) You and I know them better as Red Delicious, Granny Smith and Golden Delicious.

• Cut the apples up into bite-size portions. We kept it to one bite-sized nibble per person, but if you’re trying this at home with your little explorers, you can obviously enjoy more of each variety.

• Encourage kids to use their senses. I told the kids to close their eyes, smell the apple, taste its flavor and feel its texture in their mouth. (This led to lots and lots of giggles.)

• Conduct an official vote. This was a lot of fun since there were so many kids and each had to pick just one favorite. I asked for a simple show of hands and quickly tallied scores.

• Ask questions. After sharing the very “official” results with the kids, I posed several questions to (hopefully) get them thinking beyond the experiment.

A few of my questions: Why did you choose the apple you voted for? What are the names of the apples we tasted? Have you tried any other kinds of apples before? Do we grow any apples in this garden (we do!)? What other fruits are in season during the fall?

Have you ever conducted a taste testing with kids before? How did it go?