OBJECTIVE

Students will act out cranberries bouncing, getting harvested and growing in a bog

Students will be able to use vocabulary words associated with cranberries including: bog, harvest, wet harvest, dry harvest, sorting machine, and hopper

ESSENTIAL QUESTIONS

What is a native plant?

How do different plants characteristics help them survive?

How do the foods that grow in a region impact the people and environment in that area?

MATERIALS

• A field with visible barriers like cones or use lines on field 
• Book: Clarence the Cranberry Who Couldn’t Bounce by Jim Coogan

PROCEDURE

Introduction:

Read the story: Clarence the Cranberry Who Couldn’t Bounce by Jim Coogan as a class. 

After reading the story, tell the students that “today you are going to become cranberries just like Clarence and his friends and are going to go to a pretend cranberry bog to play a game”. 

Explain the rules of the game. The game is essentially fishy fishy cross my ocean but substituting in cranberry vocabulary words. 

There are two or three farmers (depending on class size) that are ready to harvest their cranberry bog this fall.  The farmers are going to say “cranberries cranberries cross my bog” and that means all the cranberries must bounce or run to the other side of the bog. The farmers are going to try to harvest the cranberries. If you get tagged by a farmer, you are harvested. Harvested cranberries should go to the truck to be brought to the sorting plant. Tell the cranberries they love being in the bog so much that they just don’t want to leave quite yet so they are trying to not get tagged.

Activity:

Bring students to bog and point out boundaries and where they should go if they get harvested. 

Ask some volunteers to be the farmer and pick two or three. Ask the farmers if they are wet or dry harvesting and ask them to show us how they will harvest (by scooping with pretend cranberry scoop  or driving a machine)

Ask cranberries to bounce if they are ready!

Play the game

Wrap Up/Assessment: 

Come back together and ask where would cranberries that were harvested go next? 

Why was Clarence concerned he couldn’t bounce? Why do cranberries bounce?