October Study: Apples + Pumpkins
We finished our first month of school and let ourselves 'fall' right into learning about all things apples and pumpkins. We started with a two week study on apples. We knew that all the kids had tried apples, but as I said in a post or two ago, our goal is to go deeper into our studies and find out more about how and where they go, what they look like on the inside and why, and how we can use apples.
Each day our question of the day revolved around something related to apples. Additionally, after morning meeting, we would look at a different fact or feature about apples. We did an apple investigation where we started by describing the outside of the apple (texture, shape, size), measured it with unifix cubes, cut it open to describe the inside of the apple, and counted how many seeds were inside. The children loved when I called them 'scientists' and they were so excited to explore such a simple food that they are so used to seeing. The next week we talked more about the apple life cycle and how apples grow. We read some wonderful stories that helped illustrate this phenomenon, but they really took to a video I found on YouTube that was a time lapse of an apple growing from seed, to seedling, to tree, to apple blossom, to apples. Throughout our apple learning, we tried different apple goods: apple chips, apple pies, apple cider, and even did an apple taste test between red, green, and yellow apples. Most of our students preferred the red Fuji apples that we cut up. We finished our learning by making apple sauce from scratch! With very close supervision we used a machine that peels, cores, and slices the apples. I think their favorite part was eating what I call 'apple spaghetti' which is just the peel that came off the apples in the process! We added the other simple ingredients and put it all in a crockpot to fill our room with delicious smells all day long! At snack time, we mashed it up, and served it. The kids........hated it 😅 But as someone who grew up on chunky, homemade applesauce, I thought it was delicious. Below are some photos of our apple fun:  |
| Making applesauce! |
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| Making applesauce! |
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| The children thought it was great they could paint with their food! |
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| Apple Taste Test |
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| Anything you can have your child do on their belly is HUGELY beneficial! |
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| Practicing patterns with apples! |
So after all the apple fun, we moved on to learning about pumpkins. Did you know that pumpkins are a fruit, too? Our learning was somewhat similar to our apple study; where we talked about the outside and insides of the pumpkins, so we took some time to compare and contrast apples and pumpkins. With your generous donations, we got to cut open lots of different kinds of pumpkins to be pumpkin investigators. Did you know that the green pumpkins are orange in the inside and smell like cantaloupe? We even got to carve a pumpkin in preparation for Halloween. We named him Frank and they loved seeing him light up in the dark at rest time. I forgot to get a good picture of Frank, but his legend lives on as Miss Tia used him to put her Halloween candy in for the neighborhood kids. We threw our leftover pumpkins over the fence behind the playground for the squirrels, chipmunks, and deer to enjoy. And just maybe, we might see a pumpkin vine out there next year! Below are photos from the pumpkin study:
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