How to Make an Apple Pie and See the World...(social studies)

Making an apple pie is an easy thing to do. Just gather the ingredients.....unless the store is closed.



This week makes the official first week of school here for not only my DH and Keke but also J. We began our week with Five in a Row. Five in a Row uses picture books to teach basic concepts throughout the week. Our first book was How to Make an Apple Pie and See the World by Marjorie Priceman. This has been one of my favorite books which I would teach a unit in third grade. So, naturally I was excited to share this with J.

The book involves a girl who is wanting to make an apple pie but she finds the store closed. So, in order to get the ingredients for this pie, she travels the world. She goes to Italy for the wheat, France for the chicken (for the eggs of course), and Sri Lanka for the bark of the kurundu tree (cinnamon) and so on... She uses many modes of transportation to get to her locations and then she shows how she makes her pie. In the end, she invites friends over to share the pie.

Using this book, we will work on learning the continents, some of the locations mentioned in the book, and we will discover different modes of transportation. For math, we will cut open an apple and count the seeds, we will learn about fractions (loosely, how to cut a pie for friends to have an equal share). Science will have us do an experiment with disolving salt water to see what is left behind and we will use our taste buds to try different types of apples to see which one we like best. We will make an apple pie (or maybe apple turnovers - I am not looking forward to making a pie crust by hand). We will create a street scene with paper bags for art and paint one as well. Language Arts, we will learn some vocabulary such as transportation, superb, and ingredients. We will be learning to write our letters correctly as well.

We began with reading the book and working on learning the continents. We played a "Twister" like game called Globe Trotting. Put your left hand on Africa. We just started learning the continents so it was more like "Put your left hand on yellow Africa." This game can easily be reproduced by using a clear shower curtain and some sharpie markers. I just happened to find this game among my many shopping adventures with my parents (love you) this summer.

Kaleb did not want to be left out so he joined in the game. He mostly chewed on the mat but he wanted to be right in there with his sister.

This is a game which jogs your memory about where the girl went, how she got there, and what she ingredient she attained. Many of the games and mini books we create came from the Homeschool Share website. I love that site!

We will be working all week on this unit so I will hopefully share more of our activities. Until then....