Monday, September 12, 2011

FIAR: How to Make an Apple Pie and See the World





During our second week of homeschool we "rowed" the book How to Make an Apple Pie and see the World by Marjorie Priceman.  We have been trying to over lap our FIAR books with the country we are studying for Expedition Earth, but I couldn't find a book to go with South Korea which we studied during our second week.  So.......since the season is right for apple-picking here in Iowa, I chose this book which I love so much!  The boys loved listening to it every day and retelling all the places the girl has to go to get the ingredients she needs for her pie.

I found a bunch of great printable activities for this book at Homeschoolshare.  However, as I am getting further into homeschooling (a veteran of over 3 weeks now........haha!), I am finding that doing every cute printable activity I find may not be the best fit for my two boys.  Which kind of stinks because I really like cute printable activities.  However, I am learning about their preferences and while I had visions of the awesome lapbooks we would complete for each book we row, I am finding it hard to fit in time for all the extras.  And truthfully, I don't think their experiences with the books will suffer if we don't do a bunch of paper and pencil or cut and paste activities.  Please know that I LOVE the idea of lapbooking and still plan to incorporate it into our learning, I just haven't found the right balance yet.  However, I wanted to add a link to the wonderful resources for this book from Homeschoolshare.  That site is truly a treasure trove if you haven't already discovered it.

So, instead of having a cute lapbook to share here, I'll share some photos of our first "field trip" to a local apple orchard where we picked our own apples.............



A few days after we picked the apples we made an apple pie out of them.  And BOY was it yummy!  I used this recipe which I've made in jars (SO cute and fun), but just made a regular "big pie" with it.  I really like the syrup coating on the apples with this recipe.




3 comments:

  1. This is the book I want to do next! Gma has a plethora of apples just waiting to be studies...I mean picked and eaten. ;) I agree, at 10pm when I'm planning, all the activities look great and exciting. And then real life teaching at 10AM doesn't quite go like I expected. I think lapbooks are going to be a lower priority for us too. My boys just love the quality time and real life experiences right now. And that's education you can't get at school so hey, works for me! You are doing great so don't sweat it. :) That comes from a two-week homeschooling veteran. ;)

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  2. I use lapbooks at school (montessori elementary in the UK) and they come into their own when the topic really fires the child's imagination and the child is old enough to make his own minibooks and choose the subject in each one. The books aimed at younger children are too directive and fill in the blank type work. We don't use too much of that in the UK - it is rather frowned upon as time filling rather than learning. Better for older children!

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  3. I've just found this as we hope to row this book next week. We don't do lapbooks either and in fact, don't do a great deal of writing with FIAR.
    Love the pie in a jar idea-not heard of this before.

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