Susan's Homeschool Blog

Nut identification can be a fun and educational activity to do with children. In the fall (and into Christmastime), grocery stores carry assorted nuts to crack with a nut cracker. I always enjoyed chatting with family members as I snacked on these nutritious nuts.

One day years ago when my children were younger, I realized that I wasn’t sure what each nut was. So I looked up “nuts” in the encyclopedia. There were pictures with labels next to them. I had my children sort the nuts into different piles. I made labels for each pile of nuts. Then we cracked each one and tasted them, commenting as to whether one was sweeter or more bitter than another. One child said that the Brazil nut tasted like dirt. Everyone chose what their favorite nut was, and they learned how to crack nuts.

Another activity you can do is to put the uncracked nuts into a paper bag and see if your children can put their hand into the bag and identify the nut just based on the shape.

You could also do a taste-testing, having the children eat a nut while being blindfolded, to see if they can identify the nut based on taste. You could even bake recipes using the various nuts!