Five in a Row Unit Study – How to Make an Applie Pie and See the World
In our family, we LOVE this book! So week took 3 weeks and really enjoyed learning about our continents, states of matter, and where our food comes from. Check our our previous row of How to Make an Apple Pie and See the World here.
We kicked off our row by visiting an apple orchard. We were able to explore on our own and it only took a few minutes to have a full peck of apples! The kids loved pulling the apples right off the trees and tasting the different varieties.
We made most of the apples into applesauce on our first day of this row, but saved 8 apples for our pie at the end.
Social Studies:
We really focused on memorizing the seven continents with this row. Each day after reading the book we reviewed the continents in some way, whether that be on the wall map, on the globe, on our world map rug, or through the map in the book. We sang this song to help us memorize, and the kids LOVE it! Talk about being stuck in your head – which is the point, right?
-One day we took several toys and as I read the story, L and I acted it out with toy boats, planes, cars and animals. We even used a GI Joe parachute to drop down to Vermont for our apples. We played the ‘Roll into Geography’ game created by 123 Homeschool 4 Me and they had so much fun.
-We watched the Continents and Oceans video on BrainPOP Jr.
-Libby labeled and colored a map showing the continents and oceans.
Language Arts:
-We acted out the action words in the story (churning, mixing, slicing, ect.)
-We had three vocabulary words this week: Ingredient, Plantation, and Locate. I had purchased Elizabeth a student dictionary at a used book store a while back and today was our first day using it. I wasn’t sure what she would think of looking words up (given that she knows about Google and all), but she actually really enjoyed it and has since gotten it out on her own to look up words. We talked about alphabetical order, and I helped her to look at the top of the pages to find which page our word was on. She then read the definition and I wrote it down for her. Then she illustrated a picture that showed what the word means.
Art:
We made city scenes as per the suggestion from the FIAR manual, and also made some apple prints with washable paint. Ian also made a hand-print apple tree craft in his co-op class.
Science:
States of Matter
We discussed the states of matter over the three weeks as the little girl the story evaporates the salt from her sea water. We watched as we turned water to ice, then melted the ice, boiled it to evaporate it (with added salt so we could see it left behind), and then made condensation to turn the gas back to water droplets.
Making butter: Turning a Liquid into a Solid (the girl in the story churned her cream into butter)
We watched a BrainPOP video about changing states of matter, and also read What is the World Made Of? All About Solids, Liquids and Gas.
We then made a chart showing the particle placement of a solid, a liquid and a gas. We used cheerios as our particles.
Apples
-We reviewed the life cycle and the parts of an apple!
Where Does Our Food Come From?
We learned about cows and how they make milk by reading Milk, From Cow to Carton, and we also watched the Reading Rainbow episode Milk Makers. We read books about chickens and eggs and watched Magic School Bus Cracks a Yolk.
After learning about the different animals and what food they give us, we visited Oxen Hill Farm, which is actually a National Park dedicated to preserving and allowing people to experience farm life. Elizabeth and Ian milked Minnie the cow, fed the chickens, collected eggs, fed the pigs and visited horses! It was an AWESOME day and I would encourage anyone in the DC area to check it out!
There are so many activities that could go along with this book, we really enjoyed it!
A few other pictures from our weeks:
Libby is working on her addition problems using the balancing scale and abacus in RightStart Math Level A. She enjoys the games and reader from All About Reading Level 2. Snuggles from dad during our nighttime stories.
Ian is continuing to work through his letters with Handwriting Without Tears – he loves the wooden blocks and magnetic board. We did some activiites from Before Five in a Row book Ask Mr. Bear as it goes along with our animal products topic. He is also continuing to work through Core Knowledge series What Your Preschooler Needs to Know Activity Book. Here he is sorting sequencing cards from the folktale we read that day, The Little Red Hen. The last picture is a page from his All About Reading Pre-Level workbook. His coloring (something he isn’t too fond of) is really improving.
And we’re still enjoying our weekly co-op classes! Read to go out the door one morning:
I can’t believe we’re over a quarter through the year! Next up: Autumn Theme Unit
Small Hands Inspired. 
I feel as if I am always learning right along with Libby and Ian when I read your blog! Sure wish I had had this kind of opportunity while growing up!
We enjoyed rowing this book and was certainly a fun memory of traveling with FI♥AR! I hope that you are enjoying Lentil, as you mentioned in your comment on my blog. I know my daughter really enjoyed whittling.
Thank you for visiting my blog and I love visiting here for inspiration on our rows, too!