Raisins

This week's Saturday School we studied raisins. First let's take a look at what you'll need to get together to do these projects.


Reading:
How Do You Raise a Raisin? by Craig Brown
ISBN: 1-57091-397-8
The Sunmaid Raisins Play Book by Alison Weir
ISBN: 0-689-83230-7



Recipes:
Ants on a Log (celery, whipped cream cheese, raisins)
Tasty Sweet Potatoes (2 large sweet potatoes, 1-2 oranges, 1/2-3/4 c. raisins)

For lots more tasty raisin recipes check out the Sun Maid Raisin website where they are offering free downloads of cookbooks they have put out over the last 100 years. For children, I recommend the 1990 My Favorite Baking Book, 2001 book, Kids are Cookin', and 2002 Get Cookin' Together Kit. You can also find fun snack ideas for kids and a word scramble for older kids on the California Raisin Growers website.




We started out the say by sitting down together and reading How Do You Raise a Raisin? It was a really fun book for the kids that smoothly integrates fun rhyming poetry with lots of good facts about raisins, how they are grown and used etc. The information was good and teaches a lot about grape history, how grapes are grown, how raisins are harvested and dried, the packaging process and different uses of rains products. I even learned some things about raisins from reading the book, which is always a plus!

After reading the book we talked about what we had read. The kids were able to relate to where raisins are grown because we have driven through the San Juaqine Valley on trips to visit family in California. We also took a mini field trip to the back yard to visit our own Thompson's Seedless grape vine. We talked about when we planted ours and how old it is, and how much longer we would have to wait to have grapes on our vines. They were very excited when they realized per the book, that if grapes bear in the 3rd year, and we planted ours last year, that we might have grapes next year! You can have this conversation even if you don;t have your own grape vines, but I'm sure it contributes a lot to the enthusiasm. It was a great way to integrate math into things before even getting to the cooking part. One thing mentioned in the book is how many pounds of fresh grapes are required to produce 1 pound of raisins. We talked about the scientific process of evaporation and how that made the grapes weigh less.

While I was getting things ready for the kids to make Ants on a Log for part of their lunch, my oldest decided that she needed to do a raisin craft. She cut a giant raisin out of purple construction paper, then on a separate paper she drew a raisin box from memory, complete with the red bonneted Sun Maid girl, and next to it, a bunch of Thompson's Seedless grapes. Then she glued the raisin on and it was time to make some logs! I had looked for some printable activity pages to go along with this week's raisin theme, but didn't find any that were specifically grape or raisin oriented. So I was glad that the kids were so enthusiastic in coming up with their own activity to do.




Ants on a Log

What you'll need: Celery ribs, whipped cream cheese, raisins, sharp knife, butter knife, cutting board.

Wash celery ribs and trim. Using sharp knife, cut into manageable pieces (we like about 1/3s of a rib) and use butter knife to fill with cream cheese. (Raisin bread was identified as a use of raisins, so of course we had to add a raisin bread English muffin to the plate.)


Now comes the fun part of the kids getting to put their ants onto their logs. This is a great time to integrate some counting or basic addition into your project. Ask your child to put a certain number of ants on their logs. For counters you can say put 3 ants on the first log. Now put 5 ants on the second log. This covers both counting and ordering. For adders you can say put 3 plus 2 ants on your log. You can even do this with some basic multiplication to tie older children into the snack fun.

My somewhat OCD children insisted that there must be exactly 4 ants on each log.


Looks good! Time to eat!!

The kids later enjoyed a raisin snack while working with The Sun Maid Raisin Play Book. It's a fun interactive book and always popular with the kids. (We also have a couple of Cheerios ones that they enjoy immensely.) This book provides some good early reader material that you can read to your child, or if they are a beginning reader, you can help them to read on their own. The raisin interative play on each page provides a nice break for them from the reading if they are having to sound words out. IT provides a nice instant reward when they are done reading the page and allows them some recovery time before tackling the next one!

The interactive portion of the book is fabulous to copying patterns, counting and following directions. And eating the raisins after makes for a healthy and delicious snack!

We also made the Tasty Sweet Potato Recipe, but I'm going to post that part as a second blog post because this one is already so lengthy and with this all being so picture heavy it makes it easier to get through to break it up some. So look for that soon!

Saturday School

Since my oldest two will be starting regular school next Monday, I've been working on coming up with a good scheduled time to continue our home schooling adventures around their school schedule, and my crazy 2 kids still at home schedule. My oldest will be in school 5 days a week, and the second will be in pre-K 3 days a week. Daddy is usually home from work on Sundays, so it makes sense to do our intensive home schooling stuff on Saturdays. Soccer games will be starting on Saturdays next month, but that's only the mornings, so hopefully we can continue with projects in the afternoons them. My plan is to post a weekly post here that covers what we have done and how my kids have been doing at school as well as at home, as well as a second weekly post that covers our major study activities so that others can do soem of the same things that we are. I'm a big believer in learning everyday skills, especially cooking, and think they are a great way to incorporate math and science into our children's daily learning diet. It is for this reason that I am planning to start out our Saturday schooling with learning in the kitchen. I'll be posting recommended reading along with activities and at least one recipe. I hope that our learning is fun, and that some of you find it helpful for yourselves as well! (I'm hoping to do our first activities this Saturday, so look for a posting Sunday, or the beginning of next week with all the details!)

January- Feb 2, 2011

The past week and a half we've been working on osmosis, evaporation, contractions and syllabication.

Adam has had a chance to participate in the experiments, but doesn't "Get it" like Reagan does. She got some science kits for her birthday, so we have been putting them to good use. First we did a "crystal growing" one, where tiny squares are places in water and absorb water until they grow into larger "crystals." It was a lot of fun for the kids to watch them grow, and then to watch them shrink back over time as the absorbed water evaporated. The other osmosis and evaporation experiment involved adding solution to a tray below a tag board tree. The children loved watching the osmosis process as the water was absorbed up the tree. Then as the water evaporated it created crystal branches on the tree from deposited salt. Very exciting!

Reagan also started learning how to make and break down contractions, and seemed to catch on right away. We've also started doing some syllabication games where we clap out the syllables of all kind of words. The favorite seems to be doing this with words read on signs while we are driving in the car. It's great because the names of businesses often have words that are not as familiar.

Yesterday for Groundhog Day we read a funny children's book "It's Groundhog Day." The night before we had read Bear Shadow in preparation as well. We've done some talk about shadows as well. It's a familiar topic for Reagan, but one that we haven't really covered with Adam yet. I'd like to do shadow pictures, but the weather has been way too cold. Hopefully we'll have a chance to go out and do it soon though. (Tracing around each others shadows in the morning, and then again in the afternoon and looking at the changes.)

We have been reading the Laura Ingalls Wilder books, which absolutely fascinate Reagan. She's had an interest in Pioneers for well over a year now, and is loving seeing that life through the eyes of another little girl. Recently for her birthday we went to a museum with Pioneer things, including some frontier homes, and she absolutely loved it. She also asked to work on a pioneer style patch work quilt, and has already completed a 4 patch, and a patience 9 patch for her project. She insists on being authentic and has been sewing it all by hand. She seriously amazes me!

We also continue to play board games, from which the kids learn a lot! Crocodile Hunter (reptile facts), Addition War (addition), and Pizza Palace (listening skills, and memory) have been some recent favorites!