Why I Didn't Blog This Week... in Pictures

OK. ONE photo. I'm trying to Blog Without Obligation, but it's hard!

Kid-Friendly Apple Pie

Kiddo helped me make a delicious apple pie -- it was really ugly -- but really delicious. I wanted to make apple pie with some of the 40 lbs of apples from our recent apple picking trip and a fellow mom gave me this recipe. The dough for this recipe requires no rolling or futzing around with ice water and cold butter. This was great, because I really hate rolling dough. It was so simple that Kiddo could do most of the work for the dough while I cut the apples. I also love that helping make a sweet treat can be a cover for teaching fractions.

For the crust:
2 1/2 cups flour: all purpose, whole wheat pastry or combination of the two
2 TBSP sugar
1/2 c oil (next time I am going to use cooled melted butter)
1/3 c milk

For the filling:
1/2 c sugar
2 TBSP flour
1 tsp cinnamon (I also think cardamon would be lovely -- my favorite spice!)
about 6 cups chopped apples (I never peel them, do you?)

preheat oven to 375
prepare the crust:
stir together milk and oil; mix flour, sugar and salt in large bowl, add milk and oil with a fork until it all comes together, adding a bit more oil if too dry. Using hands, form ball and divide into two. Tear off pieces of dough and press into bottom and sides of pan.

prepare the filling:
stir dry ingredients together and toss with apples

Tear off pieces of second dough ball and smash flat. Kiddo used the bottom of a glass. Place smashed pieces over top of apples.

Bake 60 minutes. You will probably want to cover pie with foil for last 15 minutes to keep from burning top crust.

Enjoy!

Oldie but Goodie

Sorting: it never gets boring. We added shells to the beans and pasta routine.

Practical Life: Filling a Jar

As part of my master plan to get Kiddo to do all of my chores, I showed him how to fill a jar with the bulk quinoa. I usually pour it from the bag, but for obvious reasons, this was not the way to go with Kiddo. I gave him a funnel and scoop and showed him how to scoop without overfilling, slowly pour the contents into the funnel and then lift the funnel base off the quinoa already in the jar to allow the new to fall in.

52 Card Pick-up

Keeping a baby occupied so you can get something done can be a bit of a challenge. I like to put a bunch of playing cards at a standing level, which New Kid can push onto the floor. He likes to plop down and throw them around. It keeps him busy for about 5 minutes, which we all know, in baby time is the equivalent of 5 hours.

Pumpkin Prints

We were rained out of our pumpkin patch trip this weekend so we had some indoor pumpkin fun. I roasted and pureed some cooking pumplins and made pumpkin butter and pasta with creamy pumpkin sauce and we did some pumpkin art.
Split open a mini pumpkin or use carrots (or potatoes) and have at it.Kiddo actually preferred to use a brush. Look closely at the moon!Earlier last week we made some crazy model magic pumpkins.

Required reading:
Pumpkin Town! Or, Nothing Is Better and Worse Than Pumpkins
the Biggest Pumpkin Ever
Runaway Pumpkin
Pumpkin Moonshine

Montessori Mornings

In his "jambas", Kiddo has been putzing around with his Montessori materials.
Building tens.Building hundreds.Building more numbers. Building the binomial cube.And of course, using the materials "inappropriately"... depending on your view. I thought it was great. You can also see we don't use a mat. For one thing, that means my floor needs to be vacuumed more often, and for another, New Kid would disturb the fun.

I'm linking this to Resources of the Week.

¿Cómo se dice...?

Kiddo began a Spanish class this fall. I am so grateful that I am able to give him the opportunity to learn a foreign language when he is this young and that some of his friends' parents are fluent and can speak to him in Spanish as he learns. I took Spanish in college, but we all know what happens when you don't speak a language... plus, I can't say I was ever fluent. I also know you don't become fluent just by attending a weekly class.

Each day I try to speak a few words to him myself. I ask him questions which he can answer using the vocabulary he has learned, such as ¿Dónde está..? or ¿Qué color es...? or ¿Cuánto...?, simple questions which are small, but daily reminders of the second language he is learning. Soon his skills will greatly bypass mine, but it is helping me, too!

I put up a few visual reminders, too.... just for fun.

Go Fish!

Kiddo loves games and one of his favorite is Go Fish! We play it a lot. Don't pass this old standard by... ...it's great for: recognition of numerals and quantities, matching pairs, listening and memory skills (Last time Mommy had a 5, but I didn't. Now I do have a 5. "Mommy, do you have a 5?"), learning how to take turns, and, of course, good sportsmanship.

Autumn Activities

All of Internetland has been waxing poetic about Autumn. And why not? I feel like doing the same myself. In lieu of an Autumn Rhapsody, here's a little reminder of what we've done in addition to apple tasting and cookie making.

We displayed the Autumn Wreath we made last year.
Kiddo has been adding to his seed collection.We planted another paperwhite.
We went apple picking for the first time and made loads of apple butter and applesauce.We made apple prints (who hasn't?) (two ways).Next week we are off to get our pumpkins!

Moon Activities, Phase 5

In the back of one of our Moon books was an activity for making moon craters using flour.
OK, let's be honest. This activity was waaaay more about having fun making a mess than it was about learning how moon craters form.
Witness:
Supplies needed.
Kiddo really liked measuring to make sure there was one inch of flour.Drop rocks or marbles into the flour. When you remove them you will see craters (and handprints). The concept is that the larger the object the greater the amount of flour (ie. moon dust) that explodes into the air, thus the larger the crater.
He did this over and over and over again.
If you are afraid of mess, do this outside. Personally, I am not afraid of mess. I am afraid of my children making me crazy. My child was not making me crazy while he made this mess AND he was willing to help clean up with the promise of being able to do it again sometime.

Autumn Cookies

I completely stole this idea from Mama in Wonderland. As penance I will promote her recent publication: an essay in the book P.S. What I Didn't Say, Letters to Our Female Friends. Click here to read an excerpt from her essay.

The autumnal effect was simple to create. Since I prefer to use natural food coloring I just mixed turmeric in 1/3, cocoa in 1/3 and left the rest of the dough uncolored. I didn't get a nice orange, but they came out good enough for us. And in case you are wondering, no, they did not taste like curry. You need only a small amount of turmeric to create yellow dough.
Before rolling:
Unfortunately, I could only find plastic autumn cookie cutters in our neighborhood -- they do not work as good as metal ones.This concept could easily be replicated for any holiday/occasion/color combination you like.

Fog in a Bottle (Unplugged Project: Weather)

An easy-peasy science experiment: make fog in a bottle!
If your kid likes to write his name in the bathroom mirror he may enjoy this experiment. Best of all, it requires little preparation and almost zero cleanup.
1. Fill a jar or bottle with HOT, HOT water for 60 seconds.
2. Pour out most of the water and then place a plastic bag with ice cubes over the top.
3. Fog will start to form inside the bottle. And here's the interesting part... while the adult will find watching the bottle akin to watching paint dry, the kid will be fascinated with watching how the fog forms, then water droplets form and then water drops run down the inside.You can mess around with explanations if you want to. Kiddo was not really into the whole air condensation explanation and truthfully, our science experiments are mostly about laying a foundation and fostering curiosity.

Of course you can always fog up a bottle, by just breathing into it.

For more weather Unplugged Projects visit Unplug Your Kids.

Next time we are making a cloud in a bottle!

Practical Life: Setting a Table

I don't know about you, but I usually write a bunch of posts and save them in drafts. I can't usually deal with blogging everyday. There. My secret is out. But sometimes this means a post I have in draft then becomes a replica of something I see somewhere else while it patiently awaits its publication date.
Learning how to set a table, of course is nothing new, but Nellie, of the lovely blog Herding Crickets posted about her charming learn-to-set-a-table placemats that she crafted just before I was going to publish this post.
My placemat learning tool is not nearly as nice. It's just paper and pen. I added the numbers for some structure when, for some odd reason, Kiddo was not putting down his placemat first, which was weird since he's been putting his placemat on the table for more than a year. I guess I confused him with trying to teach something he already knew. Silly me. But you know, he loves numbers!
Before:
After:Um, yes. I am fully aware that nothing matches.

Comparing Apples to Apples

In anticipation of our trip to the apple farm this weekend, Kiddo and I performed a taste test on 6 apples I bought at the farmer's market. Kiddo likes charts and categories, so it was fun for him. Plus, as we have been reading a ton of apple books he has gotten into all the different apple names. He always wants to know what kind of apple I am giving him.

The set up: To keep Kiddo busy while I cut up the apples, I gave him stickers to label everything. Then I secretly wrote down the names of the apples to be revealed after the taste test.He chose either sweet or tart, crisp or soft, for each kind.His favorites were Yellow Delicious, Empire and Jonagold.

Reading Assignment:
Apples, Apples, Apples (pictured)
That Apple is Mine!
Our Apple Tree (my favorite of the myriad of "this is how an apple grows" books that are out there. It has less of the excruciating detail, which may not be of interest to the preschool set and has whimsical drawings.)

New Kid Rule #485

... all things on shelves must be put on floor.