Why?

Your children might be familiar with an apple or a strawberry, but what about more exotic fruits that you can find at the supermarket? Lychees, kiwis and dragon fruits? By dissecting these fruits you can teach them more about how fruit is used as seed dispersal to grow more fruit – and also encourage them to be braver with their food choices!

How long will it take?

Less than an hour

What do I need?

• Interesting fruits from the supermarket, particularly ones your children have never seen before.
• A sharp knife (used by adult)
• Pencil and pens
• Paper (folded in half and half again, then unfolded – this will give you 4 squares.

How do I do it?

1. Ask your children to write the name of the first fruit down in the first box on the paper. If they don’t know it, or are unsure how to spell it, this would be a good opportunity to use the Internet for research and investigation.
2. In the second box, they should draw a picture of the fruit. Does it have hairs? Seeds on the outside? Prickles? Pretty colours? Patterns and shapes on it? What colour is it?
3. In box 3, they should draw what they think it looks like inside. Does it have pips, or one big stone? What colour is the fruit inside?
4. Cut the fruit in the middle (carefully – with you using the knife!) Did they guess that the inside would look anything similar to how it actually does?
5. Ask them to draw what the inside of the fruit actually looks like in the last box.

Top tips!

• Try this again with different fruits.
• Even if you do this with fruits they have seen inside, they will probably find it difficult to draw them as they won’t have stopped to consider it – so try this too!
• Teach them the differences between fruit and seed. Fruit: the enlarged part which contains the seed(s). Seed: the product of reproduction of a plant, which contains everything necessary to grow a new plant in the right situation.