How to Make an Apple Pie and See the World

This is another book from Five in a Row. A little girl wants to make an apple pie, but the market is closed. She decides to journey around the world to collect the freshest ingredients.  

This has been a fun week for both the girls and me. All that follows took place during the week, I didn't put them in order, but this is the order I would have liked to have done them in! I arranged to get out with just the oldest two so we could go in search of ingredients for our apple pie.

Day 1:

 

We started with apple tasting. 

Lemur didn't like any of them except the red delicious or "the tomato one" that she picked out at the store. Which is funny since we only ever buy Fuji in this house. I tried to explain the difference between taste, texture and opinion, but in the end decided it didn't matter.

Day 2:
We talked about something I'm surprised the FIAR book didn't point out. I asked Tamarin if the clothing, buildings and other items in the pictures looked like this story was taking place right now. She said it looked more like Mary Poppins. We talked about how they don't have to tell you the year in a book for you to be able to figure out around when a story takes place. In these books it's pictures and in other books it could be words that suggest a different time period.

I searched everywhere for sugar cane, the stalk, the sticks, anything and came up short. We did find wheat berries, cinnamon sticks, cream (Tamarin was disappointed I said we couldn't bring home a cow), and needless to say we have plenty of eggs.

We made butter from the cream.

The girls tried to grind the wheat with our mortar and pestle. I showed them what they had to make it look like to be able to use it and we briefly discussed the progression from stones to crank machines to motorized machines to create flour.

Tamarin chewed on the cinnamon stick for about half an hour. She LOVED it. I showed them powdered cinnamon and they compared the two. We talked about how cinnamon was the bark of a tree so when you add cinnamon to things you are eating tree!

At this point Lemur had moved on to other things which left Tamarin and I to talk about sugar cane, molasses and sugar. I explained to her that molasses and sugar come from sugar cane. I gave her a brief overview of the boil, chop, squeeze and dry process that makes sugar and let her try the molasses.

Day 3:

We labeled parts of the apple. I wrote all the words on our board. Lemur wrote them all on her apple! Score! Progress happens! It may not have been pretty, but getting this kid to write anything has been like pulling teeth! However when I snapped this picture she was picking her nose, or at least it looked like it, so I decided to trim it to just show Tamarin....

We've talked about seeds and how they grow before, but we covered it again anyway. It was nice to hear Tamarin retained most of it from the fall. We talked a LOT about seeds. I've been light on science lately so it made me feel better to be heavy on it this week.

Day 4:
I made passports for the girls. I downloaded the flags from this site. They wrote their names in them and the date we "visited" that country. I thought it would be a good way to remind them that we already talked about that country the next time it's brought up. I wrote How to Make an Apple Pie beside the date (if I'd let them do it then I'd have to start a whole other book :p)

I also got Chris to bring home his passport so the girls could see the real thing. We read P is for Passport and talked about all the countries the little girl visited. We discussed the different languages from each country including examples that I'm sure I butchered.

I added pages on these countries and their significant landmarks, people and examples of the language into our continent books. Oh, I don't think I've shown you those yet.

They go with our continent boxes. On the geography front I also want to show you something really cool my friend got us!

Discovery Kids World Map 

I used it to play a game to see if the girls could remember where the ingredients came from. I used the flags and pictures of the items from the site listed above.

Tomorrow is Day 5. We'll wrap up and review what we covered this week. Then make our apple pies. We usually talk fractions when we bake and we bake a lot. I'll post some pics tomorrow.

Videos we used:
How It's Made: Apple Pie
How Stuff Works: Wheat (available on netflix) - Tamarin made it at least 15 minutes into it :p
Curious George Goes Up the River - George finds himself lost up river. He uses landmarks to make a map and find his way back home.

Books we used this week: