Fruit Salad
Putting steps in order: make a fruit salad safely, and grow a tomato from a seed.
How it plays
Pictures of a job, mixed up. Ruby Roo asks “What comes first?” and your child puts them in order: making a fruit salad (wash your hands first, a grown-up does the cutting, then share it) and a tomato growing from a seed to a red tomato. At the end Ruby Roo reads the whole thing back. A picture in the wrong place just goes back to try again.
What it's for
Putting steps in order: make a fruit salad safely, and grow a tomato from a seed. There is no score to lose and no way to fail: a wrong move is met with a gentle nudge, and a level ends when it's done.
Away from the screen: Make it together
About two minutes, with things most homes have.
- Wash your hands together, with soap and water.
- Your child washes the fruit; you do the cutting.
- They put the pieces in a bowl and share it out.
- Afterwards, ask them what happened first, next and last.
Three questions to ask while they play
- What do we do before we touch food?
- Who does the cutting? Why?
- What does a tomato look like before it's red?
Play together
Things to say or ask
- First we wash our hands. Then what?
- Knives are sharp, so a grown-up does the cutting.
Taking turns on one device: Take turns choosing the next picture.
If they find it hard
Say “first”, “next” and “last” as you point to each spot. If the tomato is hard, the salad is the one to start with: they've seen it happen.
Every fact, and where it comes from
What Ruby Roo says in Fruit Salad was checked against the page it links to.
- Tomatoes are green when unripe and slowly change from green to red as they ripen. (Kids' Country (East of England Agricultural Society))
- Wash and dry your hands when handling food, and wash fruit and vegetables. (NSW Food Authority)
What it practises
- Putting a story in order. Retelling a story from its pictures: what happened first, next and last.
AC9EFLE03 (English, Foundation); AC9EFLE05 (English, Foundation); AC9EFLY05 (English, Foundation) - Life cycles. How living things grow and change: egg, tadpole, frog; egg, caterpillar, chrysalis, butterfly. Life cycles are a Year 3 outcome, so this is a gentle early start.
AC9S3U01 (Science, Year 3); AC9S1U01 (Science, Year 1)
The codes are from the Early Years Learning Framework V2.0 (for children from birth to five) and the Australian Curriculum v9 (Foundation to Year 2). Each links to the official wording. Every skill, and the games for it.
What it costs, and what we collect
Nothing, and nothing. There is no account, no advertising and no tracking of any kind. Which games have been played is remembered on your own device and is never sent anywhere. The full version is here, and it's short.
Where it lives
Fruit Salad is part of Food & Cooking. It works on a phone, a tablet or a classroom screen, and once it's been opened it keeps working with no signal at all.
Updated