Autumn Markets and simple effective links with Maths and Literacy

For many of us in October in our own Primary Schools,it's the season of Harvest festivals, Autumn Fayres and celebrating the produce we have seen growing around us.
What a wonderful opportunity to practise those numbers ,colours, simple transactional language phrases we have introduced in our language learning plus an even better authentic opportunity to explore the fruits and vegetables of a target language country!I was in Germany a week or two ago and spent a very happy morning wandering around the local fruit and vegetable market looking at all the wonderful produce!

Simple ways to incorporate this into language learning

First of all.."What in the World is it?" Why not touch, feel and taste some of these new vegetables and sort them alongside more familiar tasting fruit and vegetables? Create your own  "Taste and Look Like Venn Diagrams" to record the results ....but in the target language of course! 

Number of.....: if you are just practising numbers with the children - when then an obvious activity would be to practise counting up what you can see in a picture or the fruits and vegetables you have brought into class

Number, fruits and vegetables  guesstimations : if the children are practising the names of the new vegetables and already know the name of some common fruits and vegetables ,then why not create guesstimation games where they have to say or write the number of each item they think may be in your "shopping bag" of  fruit and vegetable items.

Guesstimate!  You could guesstimate the weight! Guesstimate the circumference or length! Teach the children the key phrases for measurement and weight( in the target language) and apply the target language to a Maths challenge of guesstimation and compare the guesstimations to actual weight and measurement (circumference or length)

Investigating description: Use prior knowledge of language and the use of bilingual dictionaries to find and use adjectives alongside the names of the items and the verb "to be" to write your own class descriptions of fruit and vegetables,(best after a class food tasting of the produce of course!).Use both familiar and unfamiliar produce.   

Market Stalls Museums : create your own class display of autumn fruits and vegetables but use the target language to label the produce- colour, shape, size and name. Ask the children to create the labels (and you could make these moveable labels for simple individual reading activities so that the children can read and place the labels where they think they fit best)