using a variable which has content separated by spaces in shell in a for loop

I am trying to read a variable with spaces on prompt and trying to use in a for loop., For example:

Enter the items to read separated by space...  
apple orange kiwi

read items  

for i in "$items"  
do  
echo $i  
...(additional operations)....  
done

But shell does take the first item - apple here. What am I missing here.