Picking Tomatoes with my Two Year Old

If you're a reader of this blog you've probably noticed that most of my posts focus on science activities between me and my older daughter (5 years).  A few have touched on my two year old but not many.  I'm not intentionally ignoring my youngest on this blog, but she's still a bit too young to participate in many of the science activities I've found for young kids.  As she approaches 3 and then 4, she'll become much more active in science.

There are times, however, where I've come across an opportunity to share science with my 2 year old.  One occurred the other evening when she and I were outside picking tomatoes from our garden.  She's been a great helper this summer in the garden, but usually she's content to hold a container and put in the tomatoes that I've just picked.  She is particularly cute when she gets mad at me for not picking fast enough!  The other evening she was not content simply putting the tomatoes in the bucket.  She wanted to pick her own tomatoes!  Of course she didn't tell me this right away and I didn't notice until she had already picked a couple.  At that point I had to have a conversation with her about the color of a ripe tomato!  The ones she had picked were green.

It was probably more confusing to her since I have more than just red tomatoes in the garden.  I have plants that produce red, yellow, orange, purple, and blue tomatoes.  I took her over to one of our Black Cherry tomato plants (purple) and showed her which color she could pick and which not to pick.  She understood very quickly and proceeded to pick away with a big smile on her face the whole time.

It wasn't earth-shattering science my 2 year old learned, but she did learn the difference between a ripe and an unripe tomato.  Science in action!  It's not always about the big things.  The little things are just as important as the big when introducing science to kids.