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

Learning numbers actually involves a few different skills, from recognizing the shape of the number and knowing the word that goes with it to understanding one to one correspondence for counting and what order the numbers go in.

A lot of this is learned best through play and activities that get kids counting and tracing and otherwise interacting with numbers. These activities can help.

I specifically mentioned tracing above because of these number formation rhymes cards from Teaching Mama, which can be used in lots of ways to practice making the shapes of the numbers, including tracing, lining up items on the number shapes (and counting them!), using playdough to shape the numbers and so on. Each number has a little rhyme to help you remember how to make it, which is cute.

And speaking of playdough, you can find lots of playdough number mats with different themes for kids to use as they learn about numbers. Preschool Play and Learn, for example, has these cute apple themed ones that also teach one to one correspondence as you learn the numbers and count to 10.

Or use these tree-themed ones from Live Over Cs to form the numbers, count out items on a ten frame and place the correct number of items in the tree to match the number (do this with playdough, little buttons or whatever manipulatives you have on hand). Your little builders will also love these Duplo number mats from Life Over Cs, which allow you to shape the number out of blocks and count out the number of blocks that corresponds to each number.

I also love these mats from The Savvy Sparrow that include the number and the word you can trace with playdough or marker, showing how to count the number on your fingers, a tens frame and a number line.

Finger plays and counting songs are lots of fun for little ones, too, and Childhood 101 has a great collection of songs and rhymes having to do with numbers (as well as printable song cards you can use with them.

This cardboard roll number chain form Hands On As We Grow would be a fun addition to singing number songs or to use in other play and counting games. And we all love something easy to make with stuff we already have.

Older kids who already know the order of numbers can also use these connect the dot number printables from Fun Learning for Kids. Or use the shapes for playdough mats or to practice tracing even for kids who don’t know all the numbers in order yet.

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