Week Eleven: How to Make an Apple Pie and See the World

How to Make an Apple Pie and See the World by Marjorie Priceman:

This is one of my favorite books of the year.  It is so fun and the kids love it.  Plus, there are so many activities to go along with it, I even had to pass some up!

First, we did apple tasting:

They were very excited about this and absolutely loved being little scientists and sharing their opinions. You can download the notes and observations sheet here.

Next, we made mini apple pies.

My inspiration was from kiwicreate.  Instead of a rolled out pie crust, we did a press-in pie crust. I bought some pre-made rolls of pie crust and divided it into balls.  It was pretty crumbly and hard to work with, so I added some shortening to each ball to soften it up.  Before we used them, I let them sit out for a few hours to soften some more.  Then, I just gave them each a ball in a mini pie tin and let them get to work:

Next we filled them with homemade pie filling:

And added some crumble (made out of flour, cinnamon, butter, sugar).  He's excited:

They brought these home and baked them with their families.

On Friday, we read the book again, and then we traveled the world.

I made and laminated two sheets of country names and maps, one set big and one set little, which can be downloaded here and here.

First, I clipped a Ziploc bag on the back of each big card.  Each Ziploc bag held the item the girl in the book got from each country.  For instance, for Italy, the Ziploc bag held some wheat.

Then, I hid the bags around the room.  Italy was in the kitchen:

I wrote numbers on the back of the mini ones and handed them out.  I also handed out some mini brown bags with handles to collect their ingredients in, as well as a list of ingredients. We went through the book and I gave them hints as to where each country was hidden.  When they found the country, I gave them each an object to put in their bags and we moved on to the next country.

On the way to Italy, we brushed up on our Italian:

 This is what I gave out for each country:

Italy: wheat
France: a chicken drawing
Sri Lanka: pieces of bark
England: cow drawing
Jamaica: sugar cane drawing
Vermont: apple drawing

The kids really love when we are able to act out and really live in the story.

Next, we made "parts of an apple" crafts:

You can download the templates here:
-Stem
-Leaf
-Core
-Skin
-Labels can be downloaded over at What the Teacher Wants.

This book has so many different potential activities, and they were all so fun!