Banana Fun Activities & Trivia for Kids

Where's Miss Chiquita?
Can you find her?
Miss Chiquita is hiding somewhere in this colorful, outdoor market. Download a BIG version of this artwork (PDF - 295k), and then use the horizontal letters and vertical numbers to pinpoint her location (for example: B2). Good luck!

Where's Miss Chiquita?
Can you find her?
Miss Chiquita is hiding in the jungle. Download a BIG version of this artwork (PDF - 278k), and then use the horizontal letters and vertical numbers to pinpoint her location (for example: B2). Good luck!

Get Creative & Color Away!
Download a BIG version of this drawing (PDF - 24k),
print out a copy, get out your best crayons, and bring Miss Chiquita to life in your favorite colors. Have fun!

When you're done eating your bananas, you can have a little fun with them. It's okay to play with your food!

Make a Banana Name for Yourself
Personalize your banana and amaze your friends! Use a toothpick to scratch your name or a design in a Chiquita Banana peel. Pack it in your lunch bag. At lunchtime, peel your banana and see that your name has magically appeared on your banana. Wow!

Pass the Banana Relay Race
This can get messy. Play it outdoors. You'll need at least two teams of four people each to make it fun.
Have everyone lie down on the grass or sand, head to toe in a line. Each person's toes should be about 2 feet from the next person's head. Place a banana between the feet of the first person in the line, who use his or her bare feet to grab the banana and pass it over head to the feet of the next person in line. The last person in line must peel the banana, eat it and run to the front of the line to win the race.

Banana Science Project
You'll need two unripe bananas. Mark them with felt tip pens so nobody eats your experiment. Put one in the refrigerator and leave one sitting on the counter. Watch for a week to see which banana turns brown fastest.

Fascinating Banana Facts

• You can use the inside of a banana peel to polish patent leather shoes.
• The average American eats 27 pounds of bananas each year!
• There are more than 400 varieties of bananas in the world.
• Most bananas are grown in hot, humid tropical countries, but some bananas are grown in Iceland in soil heated by hot warm geysers.
• A man in India once ate 81 bananas in a half an hour.
• Bananas don't grow on trees. They're actually a giant herb.
• Bananas are one of the few foods to contain the 6 major vitamin groups.
• If you peel a banana from the bottom up you won't get the string things.
• Those stringy things are called phloem (pronounced FLOM).
• The word banana comes from an Arab word “banan” meaning finger.
• An individual banana is called a finger. A bunch of bananas is called a hand.
• The scientific name for banana is musa sapientum, which mean fruit of the wise men.
• Bananas are a very rich source of vitamin B6, which your brain needs to function properly and make you wise.
• The world's record for the longest banana split is 4.55 miles.
• The phrase going bananas was first recorded in the Oxford English Dictionary because of the banana's connection with monkeys.