I have been really struggling this year to find a structured routine for my younger children. B4 and A2 therefore gets into A LOT of mischief! In an effort to help their day be more productive (who am I kidding - and less destructive!), I have started doing FIAR with them again. I am attempting to keep within the themes they are learning in other subjects, especially geography. Right now we are doing an introduction to geography, so we started in FIAR with How to Make An Apple Pie and See the World, by Marjorie Priceman.
This book is an absolute delight to read, and one of our favorites. It is about a little girl that desires to make an apple pie... but her market is closed. She therefore travels around the world to get the ingredients she needs to bake her pie.
While the precedent of FIAR is to read the same book for five days, I always do them for two weeks... it just seems to work better for us, with everything else we are doing. Everyday we read the book, along with other books. Our focus this first week was on apples! The extra books we read included:
Apple Valley Tree by Ann Turner
Seasons of Arnold's Apple Tree by Gail Gibbons
Ten Apples Up On Top by Dr Seuss
Ten Red Apples by Pat Hutchins
Me and The Measure of Things by Joan Sweeney
Apples by Gail Gibbons
How Do Apples Grow by Betsy Maestro
The Apple Pie Tree by Zoe Hall
Johnny Appleseed, My Story, by David L. Harrison
Johnny Appleseed by Steven Kellogg
Johnny Appleseed by Jodie Shepherd
Our activities included:
- "Seasons of an Apple Tree" chart based on what we read (idea from Chasing Fire Flies)
- "Apple Tree Coloring Page," from Confessions of a Homeschooler
- looking at various measuring instruments used in cooking, including measuring spoons, cups, and scales,
- making apple crisp,
- watching "Life Cycle of an Apple Tree" on youtube
- completed a "Life Cycle of an Apple Tree" worksheet
- colored "Apple Parts" worksheet (I types in "apple parts worksheet" into google and pulled up images)
- completed a "Keep Apples from Turning Brown" experiment
For the experiment, I cut an apple into 8 slices. We kept one slice as our "constant" and then put different substances on each apple slice to see if it would keep the apple slice from turning brown. My children chose apple cider vinegar, white vinegar, baking soda, sugar, salt, lemon juice, and raw milk. We checked on the slices every ten to fifteen minutes, and then again in the morning.
Original set up:
After 15 minutes:
After 30 minutes:
After 45 minutes:
After an hour:
An hour and a half:
Next morning:
Amazingly, the lemon juice (which we knew would keep the apple from turning brown) and the raw milk (!?!?) kept the apple from turning brown. The baking soda actually "ate" the apple, turning it meaning and as my children described "nasty and grainy." The salt actually did a decent job as well, though not as efficient.
Looking forward to week 2!!!
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