FI♥AR: How to Make an Apple Pie and See the World

 Wowee, has it been a LONG time since I wrote a post here! I started this blog when my oldest child was three as a way of documenting his learning journey. He is nearly 19 now, but I continue to homeschool my other children.

Recently, we returned to a beloved curriculum called Five in a Row. Aidyn and I have such fond memories of it, and I want to gift that same joy to my younger children.

The first book we rowed was How to Make and Apple Pie and See the World.

We opened the unit study by visiting a local apple farm for some good ole apple picking, cider tasting, and a tractor ride.

Social Studies: Geography

After our first reading, we listed all the places the narrator visited in order to gather ingredients for her apple pie. I bought an inflatable globe from the Dollar Tree and printed icons to represent the locations.

We took turns finding and labeling all the locations. This was a good way of practicing memorization as well as learning parts of the world. You can find the labels and more ideas HERE.

Language:

We discussed the humor in the writing and what made certain lines funny (exaggeration, unexpected conclusions, actions, and ideas).

We also explored some of the vocabulary words 4-square style. On a large whiteboard, I made a cross to create four squares. In the middle, I wrote the word ("elegant," for example). In one square, we defined the word. In another square, we wrote a list of synonyms. In the third square, we brainstormed a sentence with the word. And in the last square, we drew a picture illustrating the word.

Art: Street Scenes and Apple Stamp Painting

For art, we looked at the city scenes in the book and compared them and talked about the different types of buildings and store fronts. Then we drew and painted our own.

On a different day, we made apple stamps and painted with them.

Science:

We learned about the life cycle of an apple trees and how apples grow using these books:

We modeled the life cycle of an apple tree using Play-Doh.

We also made apple crisp and apple cake and filled the house with yummy apple aromas!

Reading Instruction:

For my emerging reader 1st grader, I made sight word cards from the book Ten Apples Up on Top. She learned them and then independently read the book.

Writing:

We did copywork of apple quotes and drew pictures of apples. We also brainstormed adjectives to describe apples.

More:

We watched a throwback episode of Reading Rainbow in which he reads How to Make an Apple Pie and See the World.

https://youtu.be/yiiNObASSCM?si=TTcyDgCEaHErXkGF

Resources:

If you are interested in rowing How to Make an Apple Pie and See the World, here are some helpful links to get you going:

https://www.schooltimesnippets.com/2011/10/lets-travel-world-with.html

Apple Resources at Homeschool Share

https://www.123homeschool4me.com/how-to-make-apple-pie-and-see-world_37/

The Fall Catch-All

It would be an understatement to say I have been extremely busy these last few months. Along with homeschooling, I finished my Bachelor's degree, we moved to a new home, and I have been training for a half-marathon. Whew! The first couple of weeks my camera disappeared and half the time I forgot to take pictures.

So here is my Fall Catch-All post about everything (mostly) that we've been up to this season (things are beginning to calm down now, so I'll be posting more regularly)

Fall/Cranberry Thanksgiving Unit Study

Fall words~

Fall books~

Beyond Turkey by Debbie Herman and Ann Koffsky illustrated a fair depiction of the Mayflower's journey to North America, the Pilgrims' settlement and their feast with the Wampanoag Indians.

Thanksgiving wouldn't be complete without reading Wende and Harry Devlin's beautiful book, Cranberry Thanksgiving.

We love the Magic Tree House series, and Thanksgiving on Thursday did not disappoint. The book is filled with Mary Pope Osbourne's research of the Pilgrims' settlement, lifestyle and clothing. It also fairly represents their relationship with the Wampanoag Indians, making no hesitation to admit Squanto's enslavement prior to the first Thanksgiving.

Fall Fun~

Reenacting the first Thanksgiving and building a Pilgrim house

Playing the "Sailing on the Mayflower" game

We also watched a Charlie Brown cartoon: The Mayflower Voyagers Netflix streaming. Here's a slip on Youtube:

 

Autumnal Apple Treats (Honeycrisp apples doused with lemon juice, slathered with peanut butter and topped with autumn granola mix and cinnamon. 

Field Trip Friday (the Fire Station!)~

We toured the local fire station with about 70 children and parents from Aidyn's home-based charter school. My camera wasn't cooperating with the lack of light in the building so I only have a few photos. The kids checked out the fire engines and fire truck and opened each and every compartment. They toured the living quarters (kitchen, bedrooms, living room, etc.) and peeked down the firefighter pole door. Aidyn said his favorite part was looking at how far down the drop was and wished he could have slid down.

What the Camera Didn't Capture:

~a beautiful and relaxed Thanksgiving holiday

~our Thanksgiving Tree we made with branches and fabric leaves (w/ words of gratitude we wrote on them)

~a beyond messy house

~a stressed out mother/wife/student/runner/worker

Storm in the Night/Weather Mini-Unit Study

We read the beautifully illustrated story, Storm in the Night by Mary Stolz (illustrations by Pat Cummings). This is the perfect cuddle-up-and-read book, especially during a storm.

We recorded the temperature from places all over the world. First, we would find them on the globe and then look them up on weather.com. 

After learning the basic water cycle, we made a cloud in a bottle!

Then rain in a bottle! (links at the bottom of post)

We read about rainbows and different types of clouds and painted our own with white paint and cotton balls.

We also worked on winter words, and Aidyn learned to spell some tricky words, including "icicle"! 

Wish I had more pictures to share!

Forecast for the Future~

I am in the middle of a huge undertaking, but we're only in the pre-planning/dreaming stages. We are heavily considering making a trip to Walt Disney World in January 2015 (we'll need a year to save for it!). This will be a first-time experience for the whole family and the furthest east any of us has ever traveled.

As we have done in the past for Disneyland, I am planning a long unit study on Walt Disney World, which includes four parks and many, many different learning opportunities. Of course, most of the unit study will have little to do with the actual parks and will touch on themes within the parks, but I would like to include some stuff about Walt Disney.

I asked Aidyn which park he wants to focus on first, giving him a quick rundown of what each entails. He chose Disney's Hollywood Studios, which will have us learning about:

• the history of animation
• the history of film
• early Hollywood of the 1930s and 1940s
• early film and television stars such as Charlie Chaplin, Laurel and Hardy, Lucille Ball,
• classic films such as The Wizard of Oz and Singing in the Rain
• sci-fi flicks of the 1950s
• stage shows
• and more!

In the meantime, we will be playing a little catch-up, reading holiday books, and enjoying the winter break together.

We're weeks away from a family vacation, at the end of which I will be running a half-marathon in support of the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention (as a tribute to my late father). 

I am still actively fundraising for the charity, so if you are interested in donating, please visit my page: Paula's Donation Page.

Links for the unit studies above:

Both Cranberry Thanksgiving and Storm in the Night are FIAR books.

Free Cranberry Thanksgiving Lapbook/Printables

Free weather unit study printables (including cloud/rain in a bottle experiment)

Pilgrim and Eastern Native American Figures

Sail on the Mayflower Game

Learning with Food: Apples!

As our school year is teetering to a close, we've adopted a more unschooling approach. I asked Aidyn what he'd like to learn next. Among the list that included insects and exploring the outdoors, he said he wanted to learn more about food and "the powers" (aka nutrients) that food gives us.

We started with apples. We loved the apple unit we did in September, but this time around we tried new activities.

We are using Gardening Wizardry for Kids as a guide for our food adventures.

 

We took an early morning walk to the grocery store and picked up a dozen apples, including 3 green apples, 3 yellow apples, and 3 red apples for an experiment back home.

We tried to guess which color apple would have the most seeds and the least seeds. We numbered 9 napkins, made a graph, and carefully cut open the apples and counted their seeds.

Turns out, with 19 seeds among the 3 cut open, the green apples had the most seeds, and the yellow had the least. This was a good chance for Aidyn to practice adding 3 numbers together at once.

Afterward, we read the apple section of Gardening Wizardry for Kids and learned about the apple's humble beginnings. We also read about pioneer games that involved apples when Aidyn decided he wanted to bob for apples!

He found it is much harder than it looks!

In the back section of Gardening Wizardry are pages of fun projects with food. We decided to give the fruit stamp painting project a try.

We re-watched How to Make an Apple Pie and See the World, since our library doesn't have it. 

We also watched a Bill Nye the Science Guy episode on farming.

And a Magic School Bus episode on digestion.

We also used the Read, Build, Write! mats and cards from Homeschool Creations to learn fruit words. Here, Aidyn is reading, building and writing "lemon."

We had a blast revisiting an apple unit study! Next up: Avocados!

How to Make an Apple Pie and See the World + Apples in Harvest Unit

September is not only apple season, but Johnny Appleseed is remembered on his birthday, September 23rd, when children around the nation learn of his love for apples, animals, and humankind. In our homeschool, it was no different.

We rowed How to Make an Apple Pie and See the World by Marjorie Priceman, which is a Five in a Row: Volume 1 selection.

How to Make an Apple Pie and See the World is a humorous story of a girl who wishes to make to apple pie. When she finds that the market is closed, she hitches a ride to Italy for "superb semolina wheat." But she doesn't stop there. She travels all around the world for the best and freshest ingredients to make the best apple pie.

This book was unavailable at our library so we watched it on Youtube. Thank goodness for Youtube!



Day One: Social Studies/Geography

I had printed geography cards from Homeschool Share, and after "reading" we applied the cards on the map while talking about each location.

We talked about Sri Lanka being a pear-shaped island off the coast of India and Italy's resemblance to a boot.

Day Two:

The home-based charter school we belong to had an adorable K-1 Camp on Tuesday. Their theme was Apples in Harvest. Aidyn spent a few hours there with other children reading apple-related books, making crafts, and devouring applesauce. When he came out of his class, he was wearing a towering apple hat.

He made us smile when he walked out of the door. With the new autumnal wind that's starting to blow, we had a bit of difficulty walking this apple-sail boat to the car.

Day Three: Johnny Appleseed and Cooking

On the third day, we read The Story of Johnny Appleseed by Aliki. We read slowly and perused the pictures of the pioneering naturalist. Aidyn asked for an encore so we cuddled up and read through the story again.

During downtimes of our homeschool day, Aidyn watched other apple-related videos, including some old Disney favorites.

This was one of my favorite Disney shorts when I was little:
 

We also watched Disney's version of the Johnny Appleseed story:



Aidyn also watched a favorite video of his from the library: Apple Farming for Kids.  (This link will take you to their website.)

Later in the day, we were busy in the kitchen making homemade organic applesauce.

 

 

While cutting, cooking, and blending, he filled out some apple worksheets about apple parts.

 

We identified the core, leaf, seeds, flesh, stem, and skin. We also guessed how many apple seeds were in the first apple we cut. Aidyn guessed 3, and we counted out 10!

 

Afterward, we had a big bowlful of yummy, pink applesauce!

Day Four: Field Trip to Apple Hill in Placerville, Ca

On Friday, the family took a day-long field trip to Apple Hill, a close gathering of apple farms (over 50 farms in all!), in the evergreen-topped hills of Placerville, Ca. As our car climbed the hills, we noticed the red dirt, mammoth evergreens and beautiful sprawling vineyards.

Our first stop was Abel's Apple Acres.

 

 

Here's Aidyn with his dad, grandma, and some random bear that made our acquaintance.

 

Abel's Apple Acres not only had apple pies, apple fritters, apple donuts, apple butter, applesauce, apple cider, scores of apple and autumnal crafts, fudge and so many amazing goodies...

...but they also had horses for riding.

Aidyn chose Boots, and the two of them took a jaunt together.

 

We even found a Johnny Appleseed cut-out and a height measuring tree.

 



 

Proud to be 46 inches tall!

Later, we went down the road to a U-Pick apple farm. Armed with his bag and some tips from the farmer on twisting and yanking the apples off the branches, Aidyn plucked several apples from the trees.

 

 

We had so much fun at Apple Hill! Before leaving, we made sure to purchase a gallon of fresh apple cider, apple-pumpkin bread, and a classic apple pie.

 

We baked the pie when we got home that evening. I know that a home-baked apple pie would have been sweeter, but with my new pregnancy status, I'm delegating as much as possible! Here's Aidyn, sleepily chomping on apple pie.

What a delicious way to end a heartwarming unit study!