Apples and more Apples

Our 3/4 bushel of apples is getting lower... but not yet empty. Which means we'll have another week of great apple fun. But for now, here are our apple activities for this week.

Some Apple Science

An apple slice with Vitamin C, a slice with lemon juice, and a slice with nothing.

Time lapse one hour: from left to right - a fresh cut apple slice, the lemon juice slice, the vitamin C slice, and the nothing slice.

 Some Apple Math

 Some More Apple Science

In one of the books we read (the fraction book actually) we learned that most apples have 10 seeds. We decided to test and see if that was true.

According to our six randomly selected apples, it's not. We came up with 10, 10, 16, 15, 9, and 11. But we didn't only count the mature seeds, we counted even the tiny little "almost seed" seeds. It was very hard to take those out of the core and tape them onto the paper.

Some Apple Literacy

This comment is too big to put as just a photo caption. These books are so awesome. I will start with Apple Fractions. First of all, fractions are way over my kids heads. But I think even they started to get the idea that you can cut something into little pieces, but you still only have the same amount of that thing as when you started. The book has apple facts and fraction facts. It is super informative, the pictures are cute. And I thought it was funny. It had a page for oranges and did a little Apples to Oranges comparison. And they had a pear in there that looked like an apple, but wasn't, so they used that to introduce improper fractions (like 5/4).  They introduced maybe 5 different kinds of apples, talked about what they looked like, what they tasted like and they even talked about apple blossoms, bees, and pollination. (1 sixth of all the bees are still pollinating the blossoms.) There was just a lot of information in a very short and easy to understand book. I thought it was very clever.

And second, A friend for Dragon, which I thought was going to be kind of boring, is jam packed with discussion material. The following is a very incomplete list: friendship, lying, teasing, Adam and Eve (snake in the garden part), honesty, diversity, characteristics of a true friend, depression, loneliness, mourning, healing, love, giving, the circle of life, how apples turn brown, how apple trees grow... and on and on. This book is, in a way, so funny. A snake tricks the Dragon into thinking the apple can talk and wants to be his friend, but after a fabulous evening of sharing, laughing, and having fun, the apple doesn't wake up the next morning. Dragon takes it to the Doctor but while he goes to get a drink, another patient eats the apple leaving only the core - or in Dragon's words, a white, wet, skinny thing. Dragon takes the apple home, and when he gets there it is a brown, soggy, mushy thing. "Are you sick? Are you dead?" And then Dragon cries, buries his friend, falls into a deep depression where he can't eat or sleep or leave the house. But eventually he recovers. I don't know. That's more information than you need. And the book is much better than my short recap, (90 percent of my readers probably just skipped this paragraph anyway - I would have too, actually - BORING) but honestly, the book is really fun to read and think about with a 4 year old.

Some Apple Art

These are Apple Peel Collages - a.k.a. I just needed to keep my kids busy for a while

And last but not least -- Apple Snacks

Applesauce

 And this last Apple Dessert goes out to Apple Farmer Annie.

 

 Yes Annie, your Applesauce Cake recipe was a smashing hit. Mine didn't turn out exactly as yours did, by looking at the picture in your book, but we still ate it up pretty fast.

Annie's Applesauce Cake (from the book Apple Farmer Annie by Monica Wellington)

1/2 C butter
1 C sugar
2 eggs
1 1/4 C flour
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp nutmeg (optional: I used it)
1/2 tsp allspice (optional: I used it)
1 C applesauce*
2/3 C raisins

Cream together butter and sugar in a large bowl. Add eggs and beat well. In a separate bowl, sift flour, baking soda, salt, and spices. Add dry ingredients to creamed mixture, alternating with applesauce and mixing well. Stir in raisins. Pour into a 9 in greased tube pan. Bake at 375 degrees for 45 minutes or until browned (use a toothpick to test) wait at least 15 minutes before you try to get your cake out of the pan or you'll lose a little of the top, like I did.

Butter frosting
2Tbsp softened butter
2 C powdered sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract (I usually put in a little more)
3 Tbsp milk

Cream butter, sugar, and vanilla. Add milk and stir well. Frosting should be smooth and easy to spread. I just spooned large clumps and ran them along the top and let it drizzle down the still warm (maybe too warm) cake.

*a note on the applesauce. I used my homemade applesauce, which is always a little chunky, just because I like it that way. The end result was a cake that had sporadic little pieces of soft apple, which I also liked. But if you were using store bought applesauce you wouldn't have the same effect and it would taste more of just like a spice cake and still just as delicious.