Machine Learning: Fruit and Vegetable Labeling

Get your child in on the machine learning conversation while grocery shopping.

Your child will get familiar not only labeling, but exploring pattern recognition. Your child will be able to think algorithmically while shopping at the grocery store.

How to Play

On your weekly grocery shopping runs, you buy certain fruits, vegetables and bring them home from grocery store, right? How about going to grocery shopping with your little one to teach data labeling, which products are fruits and vegetables. Once you explain to your child, then, it is the best time to challenge your child to ask new fruits or vegetables name to let him/her predict the product based on information he/she got provided by you.

Step 1: Time to go grocery shopping!

When it is time to go grocery shopping, ask your child to join you with this fun labeling activity.

When going to grocery shopping, you should consider the enough time and effort, as well as the labeling accuracy of fruits and vegetables.

In this activity, you and your child will collect and label your grocery products; fruit and vegetable data. It might be the most time consuming step of creating a supervised learning experience for you. However, it is worthy to explore with your child. What is supervised learning?

Supervised learning means, basically, learning from labeled fruits and vegetables experience in this example.

Start Labeling in a supervised learning approach. Observe fruits and vegetables while shopping with your child.

Step 2: Explain and identify foods at the grocery store

Before starting the labels, make sure your child is familiar with definitions of fruits and vegetables. He/she might not have labeled data in his/her core memory.

Having said that, when you go shopping for grocery in the weekends. Explain and identify your child what is fruit? What is vegetable? Encourage your child ask questions while explaining.

For example, Tell your child vegetables are:

- Mostly are able to be cooked or boiled

- Usually not sweet

- Usually green

- Edible as a main dish

However, fruits are

- Edible in raw. You don’t cook for eating

- Sweet

- Eatable as a dessert

Step 3: Following week

When you go shopping next week, let him or her decide what is the characteristic and features of fruit or vegetables.

Ask what category banana related to or what category lettuce related to. Don’t ask new fruit or vegetables you taught yet.

If you taught previous weeks strawberries or peaches, stick with those fruits, if you asked lettuce, stick with vegetables.

Step 4: Ask new vegetables and fruits

This week ask about new vegetables or fruits, maybe you didn’t ask about onion, ask about onion is it a vegetable or fruit? What makes onion vegetable or fruit, what made you to think about it.

Let him label fruits or vegetables, give him the list of fruit and vegetable.

Begin conservation back and forth. Ask questions are carrots fruit or vegetables.

Afterwards, ask question like what was the main idea you learned about machine learning or labeling? What is something you have been struggling?