The Grandmother describe her excitement when she wastold by one of her friends that she had just been to the local shop and had seena bannana. The Grandmother, Sarah, was so excited that she rushed down to theshop just to get a look of this unusual fruit. She knew that she wouldn't beable to buy one because she didn't have any money. When Sarah arrived at thesmall shop it was filled with excited children trying to get a look at thebannana.
The shop keeper could see the excitement on the childrens faces anddecided to show the children how you got to the fruit, as many of the childrenthought that you must have to eat the skin.
Sarah describes in detail thelook and smell of the fruit and the gasps of astonishment as it was unpeeled.Theshopkeeper then surprised all the children by cutting up the fruit into smallpieces for the children to taste. Some wouldn't have any because they weren'tsure if it was ok. Others slightly more brave put a small piece carefully intotheir mouths.
They were all amazed by how sweet and soft the fruit was.
Whenthis story was told to the other pupils they were all surprised by theexcitement of the children because of a bannana, a fruit that they are all quiteused to seeing and tasting
.A number of things followed on from this inthe classroom.
Many of the children then wanted to ask their own relatives or neighboursabout the fruit that they were used to eating fifty years ago. Some wentshopping and recorded the different fruits for sale and which countries they hadbeen grown in. The differences were compared not only in the types of fruit buthow the shops differed between then and now.
The teacher also asked thechildren if they would have been the children to refuse the fruit or if they would have eaten it.
The next day he arrived with donated exotica from a supermarket. The children became almost as excited as their grandparents had fifty years ago. Like the shopkeeper he allowed the children to look carefullyat the fruit to touch it and smell the skin. Then the mangos, pau pau, physalidsetc were cut open or unpeeled .
As the children began tasting they wereasked to think of words to describe the taste smell and touch of the fruit ascarefully as possible.They were then organised into groups and had to put theirwords describing each fruit into the best order they could to describe theparticular fruit as well as possible.
In similar groups to accompanytheir descriptions they were asked first to make still life sketches of thefruit using graphite, charcoal and pencil concentrating on achieving the toneswith shading techniques.
