Apples!!!

Our unit for this week is APPLES! I LOVE planning these units over the weekend (late Sunday night :o) and a few weekday minutes the week before the unit. D is LOVING them and begging to do more activities each day - not dreading school - yeah! K is tagging along and I'm finding easy themed activities for her to do when D has to to do something more complicated.

We read this book from our library to begin our study of Apples...
However, on the first page we found something we don't agree with...that apples are 2 million years old. ;o) D recognized it as a false statement. We stopped & talked about it briefly. K answered my questions when I asked, Who created apples? She answered, God! When? Creation! Yeah! We continued reading about apples, the trees, apple products and varieties.

After we read the book, we cut open an apple from the side. Both kids were amazed to find a STAR! It was fun to see the seeds and the seed chambers (Did you know they're called carpels?) that we read about them in the book. :o)



D labeled the parts of the apple using this from homeschool share's website. (We're going to assemble a lapbook for the apple study this week.)


We had just bought 5-6 apple varieties this morning from a local store that had tons of apples for 49 cents/pound! It was fun for them to pick new varieties out to try that we don't normally buy to eat each week.

D&K wanted to sample every last one we bought, but we picked only 3 to sample today...Gala, Jonagold & Granny Smith. After each sample, D wrote the name of the apple and checked the appropriate boxes for this taste test fold-out book for his lapbook. So far he likes all of them. ;o) Did you know there are 2500 varieties grown in the USA?! WOW!

After the sampling, I saved the star shapes from all the apples and the kids used them as "stamps" with apple colors (red, green & yellow - we read that in the book, too).


At the end of the book there were a few pages with processes/recipes for apples. We chose to make an apple pie today...D kept telling me he doesn't want to eat the "chunks" but I'm hoping since he helped to slice the apples, place them in the pie crust and sprinkle the brown sugar/cinnamon mixture over top he'll eat it...at least a little of it after dinner tonight.

Both kids helped me make the pie crust - they were both excited I got to use my new rolling pin "rubber bands" that I bought in Amish country this past weekend. They are great to make the dough even when rolling it out!

D was very careful making slices...and I let K slice a few with LOTS of help from me.

The finished product cooling to enjoy after dinner tonight...