Strawberry Activities for Kids

Strawberry season has already come and gone where I live, but I still think of strawberries as being a transition between spring and summer. They’re fun to talk about and explore any time of year, but if strawberries are in season or accessible where you live, so much the better because you can add picking strawberries or making strawberry jam to your activity list.

First let’s talk about the parts of a strawberry plant with this printable from Affordable Homeschooling. You can talk about how strawberries are unusual because their seeds are on the outside of the fruit. And Homeschool Preschool has a printable showing the life cycle of the strawberry from seedling to plant to fruit to seeds.

Simple Creative Learning has a printable pack that includes labeling the parts of the plant, a life cycle page, letter tracing, pattern recognition, three part cards, counting activities and more, as well as a printable mini book kids can color.

3 Boys and a Dog also has a printable activity set with a strawberry theme that includes shapes, writing activities and letter matching, to name a few. You can grab a strawberry letter recognition activity from ABCs of Literacy. This one includes printable strawberry shapes with upper and lower case letters and recording sheets to mark upper and lowercase letters and write letters.

For older kids, print out the free strawberry notebooking pages from Tina’s Dynamic Homeschool Plus, which include information about different varieties of strawberries, plant diseases and the history and lore surrounding strawberries. The site also has information on the life cycle of a strawberry and an activity to hand sew a strawberry out of felt.

Speaking of older kids, another fun strawberry project is extracting the DNA from a strawberry, which you can do with this tutorial from the National Human Genome Research Institute.

How about some strawberry crafts? Work on scissors skills with the strawberry printable craft from Krokotak, or print a strawberry shape using bubble wrap with this idea from In the Playroom. Inspire the Mom has a few strawberry crafts just for preschoolers and early elementary (love this mosaic one you could also do by hunting down the color red in magazines and using different kinds of paper).

And of course some sensory fun is always in order. Try the strawberry play dough made with Jello from 123 Homeschool 4 Me, or make your own freezer jam with this classic recipe from Betty Crocker.

You might already have some strawberry themed books on your shelf, but I also found Spring is for Strawberries by Katherine Pryor with illustrations by Polina Gortman (hardcover, 32 pages, published 2023 by Schiffer Kids, suggested retail price $16.99), which is a celebration of seasonal produce throughout the year (only one page features strawberries, but it’s still a cute book about the seasons). This is a great one for families that love the local farmer’s market.

Summer Worksheets with a Fruity Twist

Free Printable Lunch Box Fruit Cup Labels

Printable Fruit and Veggie List

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Summer Reading Printables and Tips for Parents

As I write this, back to school time is right around the corner, and if you have kids going to school for the first time or who might need a refresher on what school is like, books can be a big help in calming fears and letting them know what to expect.

School Days by Fabiola Sepulvelda is a wordless picture book full of photographs of various things that happen during the school day, such as leaving home, getting off the bus, greeting your teacher, raising your hand to talk, circle time, reading, quiet work, lunch, recess, art and music, and greeting your parent at the end of the day.

This is a nice book to prompt conversations about the way things might look and things that might happen at school, and could also be used in the classroom to talk about routines and what happens each day. It’s meant to be for kids who don’t yet know how to read, but could be used with older kids as well.

Ready for School by Dona Herweck Rice and illustrated by Amanda Morrow follows a little girl through a day getting ready for school and thinking about all the things that happen at school. It covers things like calendar time, mat time, being read to, math (they’re learning to count to five), recess and art. She’s so excited to go she wakes her mom up and it’s still nighttime.

This one is good for kids who like reminders of how the routine goes (both getting ready for school and being there) and those who might be apprehensive about what’s going to happen or if it will be fun.

The same author has a series of books that are meant to be for ESL learners but would work for others as well. Welcome to School has photos and single words or short phrases for things you do to get ready for school, different ways you might travel there, greetings, morning meeting activities. people you might see at school (like teacher, student, custodian), places and objects you’ll find around school, things at recess and school rules (like line up and raise hand).

Your School Day uses longer phrases (“riding in car” instead of just “car,” for example) and older children in the photos. The routine is also for older kids and uses bigger words like announcements and equipment. It also shows photos of different subjects kids might study, different kinds of learning groups and more people and places you’ll find in school.

A Day at School is kind of in between these two, with older elementary students going through many of the same things. This one doesn’t mention morning meetings but also doesn’t use the level of vocabulary of the book for older kids. Either this one of Welcome to School would be fine to use with young kids who already speak English but might like to see all the things and people they’ll see at school.

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