We learned so much in our fruits and vegetables lesson that we can’t wait to share with you what we did.

My children are still going around, naming all of them and categorizing them correctly, too! Did you know that pumpkins are fruits? What about garlic? And tomatoes?

In this post, we will show you how we can tell whether produce is a fruit or a vegetable. We also have a free printable set to help you teach the activity coloring pages.

They learned naming, sorting, coloring and matching fruits and vegetables. We hope you enjoy it and share this post with your friends!

Naming Fruits & Vegetables

Let me begin by telling you why I decided to come up with this lesson for my children.

I came across a video (you can watch it below) where elementary children did not know the names of fruits and vegetables; much less would they know whether one is a fruit or a vegetable!

I won’t even go there, but it was very sad to watch. I decided that wouldn’t happen to my children.

Shocking, isn’t it? Well, let’s get started! 😀 Ready?

We started by going to the local market and I asked my children to point at produce they recognized and knew. They knew a lot, but some were confusing and that is ok.

For example, they didn’t know the difference between a jalapeño and a serrano; cilantro and parsley and so on.

Sorting Fruits & Vegetables

Once I saw how many names they knew and how much produce they were able to recognize, I moved on to explaining to them what makes a fruit a fruit and what makes a vegetable a vegetable and what is the difference between the two.

Do you know?

I wanted to double-check in our botany books, but the answer is actually simpler than you think.

What makes a fruit a fruit? What makes a vegetable a vegetable? Well, a fruit is a fruit is a fruit. Ha ha. Really. It is. If the produce is the fruit of a plant or a tree, then it is a fruit.

If the produce is any other part of the plant, namely, a root (like potatoes, carrots, turnips, etc), a stem (like celery, for example) or a leaf (like spinach and lettuce) then it is a vegetable. Easy peasy, right?

Our next activity was to sort our fruit and vegetable cards (free printable here at the end of the post).

Before the activity, I printed the card set in color (layout setting was 2 pages per sheet, so it printed 4 cards per page) and laminated the cards.

We used the answer key (in the free printable set) to discuss what the produce is.

We named one by one and figured out whether they were fruit, roots, stems or leaves. It was fun discussing each.

I was planning on doing a few with them and work our way up, but they insisted on doing them all.

Coloring Fruits & Vegetables

After that, we got the black and white fruits and vegetables in the free printable coloring pages and the each picked 6 cards and found their color counterparts.

They colored the black and white cards using dry erase markers and dry erase crayons.

They also copied the fruit and vegetable names on the dashed lines at the bottom of the black and white pictures.

Matching Fruits & Vegetables

Our last activity had to do with real fruits and vegetables.

We had our sorted cards (fruits on the left and vegetables on the right) and in a basket, we put some of the fruits and vegetables that we had cards for.

I set out an assortment of plates and dishes on the mat and each of my children took turns doing two things: pick one fruit or vegetable from the basket and the matching card to place both on a plate or a dish.

You can see some of the ones we did in the collage below.

Free Printable Set

Now it’s your turn! Feel free to print this awesome set with color and black and white fruit and vegetable cards along with an answer key for sorting fruits and vegetables.

I made the printable set with 2 cards per page (so half a page each), but if you change the printing settings to 2 pages per sheet, it will print 4 cards and you will get the size cards that you have seen in this post. Enjoy!

Here is another post with free printables that you might like:

Parts of a Fruit {Lesson & Free Printables Set}

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