¯`•. November 07, 2018

Quest: Apple Study!!

We’re still working on Quest badges (moreso, now that we’re no longer doing the NPS on-line Webranger Program). Our first badge of the year was actually Florence Nightingale, but this is our first ‘project’ badge. Anyhow, it’s time for another badge, I’m afraid. I can’t really seem to help myself.

I really have to tell you, though – I’m sick to death of all the on-line resources for homeschooling being geared towards kids ages 3-7. Kid do grow up, as time passes, you know. GAH, sorting thru seventy-eight sites with toddler activities just to come away with a lot of nothing is disheartening. Even little kids shouldn’t have a constant bombardment of ‘twaddle’ art and activities. ((I’m a proponent of Charlotte Mason theories on giving children realistic art/lessons – in story form, but geared for them to advance, not keep them in Nickelodeon land.)) I’m digressing. APPLES!!!!

We have the Steven Kellogg “Johnny Appleseed” book (if you don’t know Steven Kellogg… he’s got a whole collection of tall tale books that are amazing.). I highly recommend his stuff – he’s right up there with Bill Peet.

There are also some cute movies – the Disney ‘Legends’ cartoon about him, and Faerie Tale Theatre’s version of the story (starring Martin Short and Molly Ringwald), on DVD. While everyone loves Disney, we actually liked the one with Martin Short, best. It has all of the apple puns in it, and it was quite hilarious. (He also doesn’t die in the end, as in Disney’s version.) Besides, he has his own ‘plantin’ dance’ which is just… So Martin Short. It’s cute. I believe it may be on YouTube.

I had the kids drum up songs about apples – they have a number from our folk song studies. ‘(Get along home) Cindy’, ‘Don’t sit under the apple tree’, ‘Apples & Bananas (vowel song), and ‘Johnny Appleseed’s prayer’ (The Lord is good to me). Maybe you can think of others. I did – Benny Hester’s “Apple of my Eye” (talk about a blast from the past!)

You can’t do a study on apples without EATING some, either! So we had apple fritters for breakfast. Applesauce for lunch. Apple cider for supper. Apple pie for dessert. It’s quirky, but fun. There are TONS of recipes for apple crisp, apple turnovers… have fun with it. Get the kids in the kitchen!

I wanted to get out our cider press and do up our own fresh squeezed, but it rained all weekend, so… we’ll see. Maybe next week? It’s been years (2009!!) since we’ve done it, and there are a few kidlets that don’t remember the process.

Then, I had the kids put together a lapbook, for study purposes. (We do lapbooks a little differently/more cheaply than most people. Instructions here.) I’ll share the pages we used:

Cover Image (apple basket)
http://coloring.com.co/Apple-Basket-Coloring-Pages-For-Kids.png
Johnny Appleseed Lapbook pages (I used pgs 9, 14, and 24-25)
https://www.homeschoolshare.com/johnny_appleseed.php
Tina’s Dynamic pages – Apple notebooking/lapbooking pages
(I used ‘cultivate’ and ‘forbidden’ pages, both printed *multipage*)
http://www.tinasdynamichomeschoolplus.com/fall-resources
Varieties of Apples photo
http://i2.wp.com/www.theayurveda.org/2015/08/Apple_varieties.png
Photo of Johnny Appleseed
https://thelibertyconservative.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/Brunet_JAppleseed.jpg
“One Bad Apple” saying
https://media.buzzle.com/media/images-en/gallery/quotes/cliches/600-497959252-cliche-bad-apple.jpg]
“Apple a Day” saying
https://thumb1.shutterstock.com/pic_with_logo/apple-a-day-keeps-the-doctor.jpg
Adam, Eve, and Apple
https://www.gchristian101.com/images/AdamEveEat.jpg
Greek Apple Myth
https://media1.shmoop.com/mythology/atalanta/atalanta-race-apples.jpg
Sir Isaac Newton & his apple
http://www.colscol.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/Newton-tree-apple.jpg
and I did over a photo on-line for the life cycle: snag it here.

We also had to do an ‘apple craft’ (as a part of our badge-work, so we chose to make Popsicle stick apple cores and glue them to the backs of our books, along with the nutritional printout and some apple world records. The instructions on how to do it are here (for now)… but it’s pretty self-explanatory, imho. And really easy, too. I had heavy jute twine from costume making that we used for the stems – it looked really good, too.

Our finished product:

click to enlarge

I also bought a bag of apples – all different varieties, and we noted the differences in prices. Then we did the taste test in our booklets, using my apple ‘ka-chuncker’ to get eight slices of each. We noted the taste, color, and logged it all in our booklets. We had ‘jazz’ apples, ‘green dragon’, ‘lady alice’ and a bunch of others. It was kind of fun, picking them out!

For copy-work one day, the kids did the myth of Atalanta and the golden apples. It’s a reprieve, and makes them narrate in their own words, so it was a definite win-win.