Apple Fun

The past few days we have enjoyed several fun projects with apples. Fortunately we have a couple of apple trees in our yard which make for a great resource at hand. As well, I had picked up a couple of other varieties of apples at the farmers market this past weekend. Add in some books, online resources, art, songs, games and science.... and you've got the makings for fun!

Holly really enjoyed creating an apple tree to start off our day. We then moved onto heading outside while Hudson was napping to explore and observe our apple trees in the yard. We picked some apples, branches and leaves for study as well. After coming in she started her nature journal with apples -- she really took the time to study them and drew them in her journal. She then chose an apple we cut open to inspect with a magnifying glass. We used a diagram of an apple to learn the basic parts of an apple and then she labeled and colored her very own apple diagram. It turned out great! We cut apples in two different directions and compared them, watched what happened as the air hit them and then used them for an art stamping project in which the star shaped centers were a favorite! After we were done with our little projects for the day Holly set up a little nature area on apples to share for the week, use at her leisure and share more of our work with later. In it she chose a few apples to put out, books we are using, apple wood, apple seeds, fresh twigs with leaves, her print art and the diagrams. Today we started out day out with an alphabet matching game I created around our apple theme, I have found this font really presented a challenge with the lowercase 'q'. She had a good time working on this little game. We then cuddled up and read a couple of books on apples and watched a short video on the apple industry - orchards and the care for them, locations of apple growth, how they harvest apples, sorting and shipping of apples and the use of apples! It was a great video. As well, she played a few online games on apples. She is having a great time with the apple theme so far. Later today Holly will be picking apples from our tree and we'll be making apple sauce. Photos to come later!