An Apple a Day. . .

Today was a day where everyone started out exhausted, and I just got more and more tired as the day went on.  Lessons were pushed off a bit, as the three kiddos watched Cars as they all woke up.  I had to feed my white and wheat sourdough starters yesterday, so today was baking day.  While the kids played with all their wooden puzzles, and wooden food toys I made two apple pies, a walnut currant whole wheat sourdough, six rosemary olive oil sourdough bread bowls, seeded beer bread and fish nuggets for lunch.  After naps, and Mason being picked up I also made an apple bread pudding, a large salad, and a tomatillo chicken and rice casserole.

We reviewed all the A words on our poster again, sang the alphabet, and letter sound songs, and practiced the /a/ sound.  We talked about autumn, and what the other seasons are.  We sang a French song, Alouette, that teaches body parts in French.  We read some poems about Autumn, and read books.  We listened to the /a/ sound and several /a/ words on the readinglessons.com website link.  We also visited the starfall website to watch an interactive video about the letter A.  The kids absolutely loved it.  We reviewed the number 1, and the color red, but didn't get to all the activities I would have liked.  None of the kids were up to anything too strenuous, or school-y. 

Today was a crazy day.  All the kids took a super early nap.  My grandmother came by to get her pie and stayed to play with and read to the kids.  Things just didn't go in the order they normally do.  While not a bad thing, it just made any hope of sticking to the routine pointless.  Hopefully everyone will get a good night's sleep tonight and be refreshed and ready for some fun stuff tomorrow.  I want them to do a coloring page for red, and we will make a list of red things to hang next to the red poster.  We will make a number one page for their number books, and a letter A page for their letter books.  If we can get to half of that I will consider the day's lessons successful. 

We also talked today about apples.  I am going to do a few apple activities, and move to pumpkins next week.  We talked about how apples grow, what colors they come in, and describing how they taste, and how we use them.  We counted apples in the kitchen and counted the apples I used for the pies.  We even colored an apple paper red.  While we were coloring I asked the kids to tell me what they learned today.  As they were telling me what they remembered, Eliza told me that it is important to learn new things every day to exercise her brain.  I really had to keep from laughing.  She is so right.  She then told me that apples are a good food to help her work her brain, and that she should have an apple now.  What could I say?  They had apples, homemade wheat crackers and cheddar cheese sticks for an afternoon snack.  They compared lengths with the apple peels from the apples I peeled for the pies.  They looked to find the longest and shortest.  I kept asking questions like, which one is longer than this one?  Which two are shorter?  Can you find two that are the same length?  It is amazing what you can do with any materials you find in the house.  Apples, healthy snack and amazing homeschooler's teaching tool. 

I will leave you tonight with some pictures of the pie that I am now going to eat warm with cold ice cream and a hot cup of decaf coffee.  My journey is headed right for the couch and tv!

And because it is so sweet, a picture of my grandmother reading to my children.  Warms my heart even more than the pie!