Preschool Adventure Box: BFIAR Blueberries for Sal

Theme: Blueberries

For more book themed ideas see:

Trays:

Blueberry tennis with paper plate rackets and blue balloon blueberries, sorting blueberries from leaves (green and blue water beads), smashing blueberries for syrup making and jam making

These tray activities were a huge hit! The tennis in particular:

and contests to see how long they could keep a balloon on their racket

The smashing of the blueberries was ,well, a smashing success (sorry, couldn’t help myself!). I had attached a silicone cupcake holder to a wooden building block to give the little girls a small enough tool for smashing, and smash they did:

We then added sugar to the juice and sugar and pectin to the fruit, boiled both up and made some blueberry syrup and jam:

Not huge amounts but enough for a muffin tin for all five children (jam on the left, syrup on the right)

The last tray was a sorting exercise and even B2 did it fairly well. They needed to separate the blueberries (blue water beads) from their leaves (green water beads):

Tiny pails and glass beads for a blueberry hunt; colouring in sheets of pictures from the book; blueberry tiddlywinks

I covered some tiny pots in foil and added gaffa tape silver handles to make some pails, whilst T11 went and hid all the glass beads in our front garden. The girls then went blueberry picking with their pails:

T11 had hid them in perfect places, and he enjoyed giving them clues as to where to find them — T11 had hidden them in perfect places, and he enjoyed giving them clues as to where to find them

They did a bit of colouring in, from photocopies of pictures in the book:

And finally the tiddly winks, which A4 requested to play during her quiet time. She loved them!

I had covered a pail in foil and given them blue, purple and green tiddlywinks. They needed to use the green ones to flip the blueberry ones into their pail.

Muffin Tin meal

We used the syrup we made to make a drink; blueberry pancakes held together with a tooth pick and 3 blueberries; homemade blueberry jam; natural yogurt mixed with the jam; and plain blueberries:

For more MTM ideas see:

Snacks

Blueberry fruit salad and natural yogurt

Blueberry muffins

Homemade blueberry ice cream: simply frozen blueberries whizzed up with yogurt.

Blueberry icecream — Blueberry ice cream

Bread roll, brie and some delicious blueberry relish:

We made up some lemonade with some stray lemons and then smashed some blueberries, drained the juice off and boiled it up with some sugar to make a syrup:
Homemade blue berry syrup diluted with homemade lemonade