Which Is Our Favorite Apple And Why?

Fall is the season of apples. Seasonal fruits bring the highest values of nutrition, so we provided our children with many different types of apples in our daily snack. We also took this opportunity to explore various types of apples.

6 Different Apples

There are more than 6 different type of apples but we chose 6 apples that are commonly found in our local grocery store; Fuji, Red Delicious, Honey Crisp, Gala, Macintosh, and Granny Smith. At first, children were introduced to one apple at a time. They were asked to examine it carefully and identify its character, appearance and taste.

          

   

  

Mystery Apple

A local farm raised apple was introduced to children for them to identify the name of apple. Based on their keen observation, taste and study of apple, children were challenged to make an educated guess on what type of apple it was. Since the apple was from a local farm, it was not as straight forward as the ones that you can find at the grocery store.

         

 

Taste Test And Voting

Children tasted 6 different apples and voted on which was their favorite apple. The highest point 6 was given to their most favorite apple and 1 was given to the least. The data was collected in 2 different sets, older group (3rd to 5th grade) and younger group (Kindergarten to 2nd grade). Scoring their favorite apple was not easy for the younger group because putting a numerical value to their liking was foreign to them. They frequently asked “what if I like all of them?” “Can I put 1 for my favorite one?”.

                

 

3 Different Data Collections And Analysis

We discussed the purpose of collecting data. One of the children mentioned by identifying the center’s favorite apple, teachers will know which one to buy for the snack so that we’ll have more of the apple. It was very insightful to have children understand that collecting information can actually help us make better choices or decisions.
Once the data was collected, we examined the result. The older group identified the favorite apple right away even before tallying the score. They mentioned that Red Delicious got 6 for the majority of the vote except by one person while Macintosh got 1 for the majority therefore it must be our least favorite. Sure enough once the scores were totaled, Red Delicious got the highest score and Macintosh got the lowest score. It was wonderful to see the older group identifying patterns and sharing their logical observation with the younger group.

We took the data collection to the next level and tried to understand what about Red Delicious and Fuji our favorite? We identified 2 major important characteristics of apple, sweet and sour and “retasted” apples for each of their different characters. Which is the sweetest apple? and which is the sourest apple? The scoring system was the same as the previous one whether children put the highest scores for the most sweet and most sour apple.

   

     

Result

Children concluded from the data collection that our favorite apple for the older group was Red Delicious while the favorite apple for the younger group was Fuji. Both groups chose their favorite apple based on its sweetness. Furthermore, the older group liked the Red Delicious because it was the least sour and sweetest while the younger group liked the Fuji because it had a good balance of sweet and sour.

 

 

 

  

References:

  1. Apples by Elaine Landau
  2. Apples for Everyone by Jill Esbaum
  3. Growing With Me: Apple by Valerie

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