Tuesday 9 August 2011

Apples Apples Apples

Apples are a great sensory experience and one of my favourite topics of study. You can do so much with them from art, to science, to language to math! I start off by making the grocery clerk angry and buying one of each type of apple in the store. They really hate weighing one apple! I photograph each apple so that we can use the picture as a reference. You can also have a couple of students do this! There is always a kid who just loves to use the digital camera! Here are my apples from last year!









Aren't they glorious? The first thing we always do is record some observations of the apples. We talk about their colours and write some descriptions. Then we cut them open, taste them, record some observations about the taste and record whether or not they like the apple. Great spot for vocabulary! We also talk about the parts of the apple and usually save the seeds too! They always want to plant them, but I have had no luck in actually growing anything.


Here my high school cooper student is recording the students' observations as they taste the apples. Of course, the next day, we always graph which apple was our favourite. This itself is a lesson in picking JUST ONE!

One of our very favourite activities is making applesauce. The kids love to put the cooked apples through the big food squisher (can't think of the proper name for this apparatus lol). It tastes so glorious the warm apple sauce. Most kids have never had homemade applesauce and it puts the store bought stuff to shame. Here are some pictures of the applesauce making day from last year and the year before!

 The kids can hardly wait to take their turn stirring the mixture. They push with a big wooden tool.
Cooking the apples!



Enjoying the nice warm applesauce!





Aren't you ready to have some today? Of course, we also stamp apples, and read tons of books about apples..both fiction and non-fiction. Some years, our study of apples lends to comparing different kinds of fruits. Since Thanksgiving is in October in Canada, we always hit the apples study during our study of the harvest. Happy apple exploring!

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