3 Awesome Ways to Explore Math with a Watermelon

A watermelon math activity provides hands-on fun and learning in the kitchen. Extend your enjoyment of the watermelon harvest with this fun math activity that explores fractions, shapes, and weights. 

Watermelon math activities

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Are you as excited for watermelon season as we are? One of our favorite summertime foods is watermelon - colorful, mouth-watering, cumbersome-to-lift watermelon. But the effort of lugging it home is well rewarded.

But before you completely gobble up your watermelon, have fun using it to explore fractions, weight, and shape with your early learners.

Watermelon math

A watermelon is an interesting material for math activities. Size, weight, and seeds are all components of the watermelon that can be explored.

These watermelon activities are simple enough for preschoolers to do with adult supervision. A grownup will do the cutting, while kids observe the shapes and sizes that emerge as the watermelon is divided into sections. 

Related: Exploring seeds in foods

 

Math activities with a watermelon

1. Shapes:

Math activities with a watermelon

 

Cut the watermelon in half. Look for the circle.

Cut in half again. Look for the semi-circle, or half circle.

Cut in half again. Look for the triangle

2. Fractions: 

Watermelon half slice

 

Divide a circle into two halves. Count the seeds in each section.

 

preschool watermelon math activities

 

Cut one semi-circle into sections as shown: 1/2, 1/4 and 1/8.

 

Stack watermelon pieces

 

Stack 1/4 pieces on top of 1/2 piece.


3. Weight: 

Weighing watermelon

 

Weigh sections of watermelon.
 
Will two 1/4 pieces weigh the same as 1/2?

 

4. Food for thought!


Is watermelon a fruit or a vegetable?

Both! Here's one reason why:

  • It's a fruit because it grows from a seed and a vegetable because it is harvested from a field. Explore more reasons to explain why it's both a fruit and a vegetable.


How do you know when a watermelon is ripe?

These are just a few ways to test for ripeness:

  • hollow when you tap it 
  • heavy to lift
  • green stem

 

 Interesting fact: watermelon is 90% water.


5. Learning through play

1. Provide a large chunk of watermelon for kids to chop into small pieces with kid-friendly utensils.

2. Place pieces of chopped watermelon in a large bowl or on a large tray for kids to squish with a potato masher.

3. Cut rinds (outer shell) into chunks or blocks. Dip in paint and press onto paper for a painting activity. We've already done this fun open-ended art activity with pumpkin pieces.

4. Cut several 1/2 or 1/4 size, triangular shape slices for stacking. Count pieces as you stack to build a tower.

5. Collect seeds to count and germinate.

 

STEAM KIDS Early Learning Resource

STEAM Kids ebook

 

 

 Math board on Pinterest exciting math activities for early learners

 


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