Making Sense of Cranberries

A multisensory look at the properties of cranberries and cranberry products.

What makes the cranberry a useful product worth growing?

Lesson Overview

What makes a cranberry a cranberry? What about its qualities make it a valuable part of the American culture and diet? How are cranberry-based products similar to or different from the raw product? Answering these questions can help draw students into the study of cranberries.

This lesson orients students to the Cranberry Curriculum by inviting them to get to know and appreciate cranberries. By utilizing all five senses, they explore the nature of cranberries as whole fruits—raw materials, in fact, that may later be processed into many different products. Students wrap up the lesson by connecting cranberry properties to characteristics of various cranberry products. Thus, the lesson creates a connection between the cranberry itself and the themes of the curriculum, including agriculture.

This lesson also integrates nicely into technology studies in a social studies or science context; as students study the cranberry and related products, they are considering the properties of a raw material (cranberry), its processed products, and why each is considered valuable.