A corner of magic, straight from the Harvest Festival at PlusKids: the little ones made a fruit salad from the riches of autumn.
It was one of those activities where far more is learned than meets the eye. First, kitchen skills: the children discovered how ingredients are prepared and combined, what gets washed, what gets peeled and in what order the work goes. Then, a sense of the seasons — by gathering and preparing autumn fruit, they understood that not everything on a plate is available all year round, and that the harvest has a rhythm of its own.
Next came the part we like best: working together. A salad for the whole group cannot be made alone. The children had to talk to one another, share out the tasks and work towards the same result. Whoever finishes first has not really finished, because the shared bowl is only ready when it is ready for everyone — a simple idea, but a hard one to settle at an age when each child sees their own share first.
It was an exercise in creativity too. A fruit salad can be made in dozens of ways, and the children combined colours and flavours to their own taste, explaining why one goes with another. And at the end, an appreciation of healthy food arrived by itself: fruit you have cut yourself tastes different from fruit someone else has put on your plate.
We are proud to see how the children grow and how much they can learn from a single autumn day.