Day Thirteen - APPLE DAZE

Frog was up and ready to go at 7am today. His talker was on the holiday icon page and he had selected all sorts of holiday words. But today was apple day - to pick up on what we didn't get to do yesterday.

Frog gave Diva another high five as she left the van for school. Frog and I headed home. But when we pulled into the garage, Frog refused to get out of the van. I needed to clean it out before our afternoon play date, so Frog explored the van and the garage while I sorted through the various things that get left in a mommy-mobile.

We came inside and did some movement work and some of our HANDLE exercises. Trying to gently move ahead with our new goose story, I added a "fly goose fly" chant to our morning work. When we were all warmed up, we headed outside to pick some apples for apple day. My plan was to follow the Applesauce story as closely as we could.

I said to Frog, "Those apples are really, really high. I think I need my special guy to sit up on my shoulders - why? - to pick the highest apples." Frog though this rhyme was really funny, but he wasn't going for it. When he headed for the stairs to the pool, I followed. I looked at him and said "Honk, Honk." He looked at me. Again I said "Honk, Honk" and "yup, its time." Both are from our goose story. Then I sang "fly goose, fly. fly goose fly" and helped Frog climb on my back. We flapped our wings and flew to the apple trees where we circled once, circled twice and landed with a jump.



We searched for an apple he could reach. He picked it and put it in the basket. We found another one, but it wouldn't come off the tree. Frog got flustered, then reached into the basket, grabbed the first apple, and threw it. (I was reminded of Stanley Greenspan saying that you don't learn about an apple by being told that it is red and round and a fruit you can eat - you learn about an apple by picking it, feeling the weight of it in your hand and seeing what it feels like and what happens when you throw it at your sister!) I put Frog down and went back to the song from the Applesauce story:

A is for Apple, Applesauce,
sticky and sweet Applesauce.

A is for Apples in the Apple tree,
waiting there for you and me.
SHAKE, SHAKE, SHAKE the Apple Tree (I did)
Down come the Apples, 1, 2, 3 (they did)

We gathered apples and put them in the basket. Frog helped pick up three apples, then he was done. (Maybe he was listening to specifically to the song).

Then I told him:

"Home from the orchard with basket a-bursting,
with fruit from the harvest this family's been blessed"
(a modification of a line from the Duchess Autumn poem we've been reading)




We headed back to the house with our apples and prepared for the next step:

A is for Apple, Applesauce
Stick and Sweet Applesauce.

A is for Apples in the Basket too,
Apples waiting for me and you.

WASH, WASH, WASH the Apples all,
Chop them into pieces small.




Frog stood at the sink to "wash" the apples. Mostly he played with the water. I stood next to him and chopped the apples. After every apple I chopped, I'd ask Frog to hand me another one. This was done with lots of emotion and facial expression. At first he ignored me. I helped him, hand over hand so he would know what I wanted him to do. Then when I would ask for an apple, he would pat a floating apple but he wouldn't try to grab it. Finally he did grab one on his own and threw it into the garbage disposal. Eventually, we made it through all the apples.

A is for Apple, Applesauce,
Sticky and sweet Applesauce.

A is for Apples cooking in the pot,
Hissing and steaming, nice and hot.
Smush the apples through the holes,
Add the sugar, stir the bowl.

While the apples cooked, we checked on them once in awhile. Frog liked watching the steam roll out of the pot when I lifted the lid. We also did some table work. We drew our letter A in a composition book. I had done a drawing of a ladder against an apple tree that had both the upper and lowercase A hidden within. I hope to get Frog to copy these pictures someday. But today he just worked on his letters. He is doing well with the uppercase A. He just needs some support and stabilization. The lowercase was new to him and he wanted to just keep making the uppercase letter. I guided his first and second lowercase A. The third he did himself with support and stabilization and he made it uppercase.



He wasn't thrilled about the the sorting game, but was able to find both apples from field of three fruits. He really loved the tree and kept sneaking off with it when I wasn't looking.




We finished our applesauce off in the food mill. Frog reluctantly took and turn and turned the crank three times while holding on the to handle with his other hand. Then he got to pour in the sugar. That was his favorite part of the whole process. As you can see, most of it was poured over his hand and onto the counter. We stirred in the sugar and put the applesauce into containers. I left the mixing bowl out on the counter and sure enough, when he thought I wasn't looking, Frog came back and helped himself to a taste. He didn't come back for more - so I don't think he was overly impressed :0)



We had some lunch and Frog played outside. When he came back in, we spent a few minutes talking about his Vantage. We looked at the keyboard page and found the letter A. Then I showed him the word predict for the word Apple. Since he seems to be playing with this feature on his own, I am going to use it with our vocabulary words.

We are down to the last verse of our song. Frog's gone off to take a nap, so maybe we will get to this after dinner.




Update:
Frog woke-up in time to make Gingerbread. When he found out that I was not going to let him dump the flour out of its canister and onto the floor, he boycotted the project. But when he came back to the kitchen and found the mixing bowl and spoon he was all over it. He also discovered he likes mom's Italian couscous. (good for eating and for playing with :0)



We will be trying gingerbread and applesauce for dessert!

A is for Applesauce in a jar.
Look at our apples, they've come so far.

Applesauce with Gingerbread.
Dream of Applesauce in bed.

A is for Apple, Applesauce.
Sticky and Sweet, Applesauce.