Creative Writing Series: Prickly Pear

I decided to do a creative writing series this year to kick off our introduction to notebooking.  The notebooking idea seems to have ignited a whole new excitement for homeschooling this year for both my kiddos.  They also both LOVE creative writing and so I've been trying to add some cool new topics for the kids to write about.  I decided to step outside of the whole "textbook" teaching method on this one and look for inspiration that is all around us.

This week it's the prickly pears on sale at Walmart for 16cents each.  Well even though we've lived in Texas for the past 4 plus years, we've never had a prickly pear...what the heck do you do with it anyway???  This question was the epiphany I needed for my newest creative writing assignment.

I quickly gathered up about 5 or 6 of the strange looking fruit and began to have a flurry of ideas that the kiddos could write about.  Some of the questions I finally settled on for the assignment:

1. Describe the fruit in detail to the reader (the most obvious assignment).
2. Research the history and origin of the prickly pear and write a short story  or poem about it.
3. Make a recipe using the prickly pear.

I thought I might allow them to pick two out of the three to focus on for the assignment (do the motherly thing and provide choices:).  However, knowing them, they won't do choice number two which is the one that I want to see.  So I'll make number two mandatory and let them choose their own second option.  Great!!! Don't you just love writing to help get the ideas flowing.  

If you have done a similar activity or even something on the prickly pear, please tell us all about it.  I welcome helpful suggestions:)