Friday Fruit Exploration: Pears

Today we are sharing our pear exploration. All week we have had different kinds of pears--Barlett, D'Anjou, Comice, and Asian. I only took pictures of the D'Anjou and Asian. Sorry!! Hazel loves pears and we have had them on our waffles or in our oatmeal for breakfast!

Pears are an excellent source of fiber and vitamin C and are sodium, fat and cholesterol free. One medium pear is about 100 calories. (Source) The skins of pears contain three to four times more phenolic phytonutrients as the flesh (inside). These phenolic phytonutrients are antioxidant, anti-inflammatory flavonoids, and potentially anti-cancer phytonutrients like cinnamic acids and the skin contains half of the pear's dietary fiber. A new study has shown that eating a combination of apples and pears will reduce risk of type 2 diabetes in women. Pears are often described as hypo-allergic. They tend to be a low allergy food. All good reasons to enjoy a pear! (Source)
The Asian pear is also known as the apple pear since it is a hybrid of the two. Hazel had a hard time deciding which it tasted like. This was our first time trying one!

As with our fruit explorations, Hazel looks at the fruit with her magnifying glass on the outside and inside and then draws pictures of them in her journal. We label the fruit and often write words to describe the fruit and its taste. We also get books that have the fruit in it from the library. Here are some we found.

Then we found some books that involve the word pear as a name, etc. and some that are multicultural and a few cookbooks with pear recipes.

Note: For more on The Korean Cinderella check out our post about it in my Fairy Tales in Different Cultures Series.  

We have been having fun with pears. The other day while we were making some Christmas ornaments (I'll share those on Sunday) with clay we also made some pears. I made one that will be appropriately sized for Hazel's dolls and Hazel made a flat one.

So that is our fun exploration of pears!! For more fruit explorations check out:

• Pumpkins
• Apples
• Cherries
• Watermelon
• Lime 
• Lemon 
• Pineapple
• Raspberry
• Blueberry
• Strawberry
• My Fruit Pinterest Board For even more fruit ideas!