The Orange Peel Competition

Uncle Hercules farms on Springfontein. He has a huge orange farm. There are rows upon rows of orange trees in his orchard. When it is Autumn, Uncle Hercules and his people start to pick the oranges. This year there are far too many oranges and he decided to contact the nursery school in Bultfontein to organize an orange peel competition on his farm.

Uncle Pete hired a bus to take all the kids to Springfontein for this big competition. The kids arrive very early at school on the day of the orange peel competition. Long tables are placed all over and small plates are next to every bowl of oranges. Cayden saw there were no knives. How will they be able to cut the oranges?

Miss Erica explains to them that early on that day all the oranges were made ready for them by the farm workers for the competition. Each orange has small cuts in the peel so that the kids can easily pull the peels off when using their little fingers.

Uncle Hercules explains the rules of the competition:

1. You must wash your hands thoroughly before the competition.
2. You may only peel oranges which are in your own bowl.
3. You may only use your hands to peel the oranges and then the peels must be thrown into the dustbin next to you.
4. You are not allowed to eat the oranges.
5. The kid who peeled the most oranges will be the winner.

Teacher divided everybody into different teams. There is a red, a yellow, an orange and a blue team. The kids are very excited and can’t wait for the whistle to blow for them to start.

Each team has the same number of girls and boys. Early on in the game it seems as if the blue team is winning, because André peeled five oranges in five minutes. The six members of the red team are struggling, and they just can’t succeed in peeling the oranges.

All the mommies and daddies clap their hands to cheer the kids on. They sing songs, call out names and can’t wait to see which team will be the winning team. After 10 minutes the result is as follows:

The red team = twelve oranges

The blue team = eighteen oranges

The yellow team = six oranges

The orange team = eight oranges

Which one is the winning team?

Well done! It is the blue team. Every member peeled three oranges. Uncle Hercules gives each member of the winning team fifty rand. They are very excited and dance around after they received the prize money. The parents are rewarded with a delicious bag of oranges!

It was a wonderful day and everybody gets into the bus feeling exhausted. Five minutes later everybody was fast asleep.