Apples at school

For the month of September, my preschoolers studied around the theme of "Apples & Birds". This is a quick recap of the preschool goodies that Em & B enjoyed:

Counting & recording Appleseed results,

Apple Math: Observing Apples, measuring apples, and stamping with apples,

Determining which color apple we like best & using our scissor skills to create apple projects,

Comparing Red, Yellow & Green apples-with a little taste testing, and again tracking our results.

What apple tree is complete without a few ANGRY BIRDS! :) So I created a shape/following directions lesson that resulted in the popular game characters. They were definitely a fan favorite!

We read the book "Ten Apples Up on Top"....

(Just had to include this random one-with absolutely NOTHING to do with apples because he's too darn cute!)

Then finally the kids earned their field trip to the U-pick orchard in Yakima. We've been going there for a couple years now. The owner is SO nice. He's the one Mike chatted with a few years ago when we picked Raspberries?????

They all had a blast running through the orchard and picking apples to their hearts content. I was so busy taking picts that I forgot to put a limit on the amount of apples we needed! When I finally figured that out-I had LITERALLY 120 lbs of apples that were in buckets & wagons and obviously could NOT go back on the trees! oops.....

Oh well-we definitely made some great memories in the process. A successful first field trip of the year.
















The kids did so good bagging up all the apples to take back to school. They were even paid multiple compliments on their behavior/manners by people we don't even know! I was so proud of them!


Back at school on the last day of the month-we wrapped up the Apple theme with an Apple EXTRAVAGANZA!

We made homemade Applepie Sauce...

And homemade Apple Juice too! It was seriously yummy!

The kids snacked on chilled apple slices with Fluffer Nutter dip they helped make (gone in seconds flat! that stuff is divine!)

Bryce loved shoving apples into the juicer and seeing immediate results! The boys all got a kick out of that!


The water table came in handy as a place to "wash" apples-or for the boys to soak each other by purposely DROPPING their apples into the water....boys will be boys. At least they were having fun-nothing was harmed and that is their memory of the day :) It's just water. Some battles are not necessary or worth fighting-no, I'm not your average teacher. But that's how I roll.

What could be more fun for boys than slimy, squishy, bashing of cooked apples! :)

A mouth full of YUMMERS!

Ayden's mom signed up to help with the stations at school today...it was a blast!

We've had a great month celebrating Johnny Appleseed. 
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

On A Drizzly Fall Day

who wouldn't wanna do a whole lotta this....

Rest In Peace

Well-I guess with halloween around the corner it is fitting that something should need a huge R.I.P sign plastered on it. That thing is more of a MULTIPLE of things that ONE thing at our house.

First case in point: Our beloved MacBook

Bye Bye. 

Dear MacBook,
You've gone above & beyond for us (being more of a heavily used everyday family/business computer, than a "laptop". I know you don't remember much anymore, since all your memory is pretty much taken up at this point. You are obviously in pain, with all the freezing up & flashing screens you give us. Hang in there, just let me get all the info off before you officially kick the bucket. I will run & grab the "back-up hard drive" to help ease some of your stress.

Oh wait....no I won't! See case #2!

2nd case in point:

My 10 month old 2TB External Hard drive....otherwise known as the "backup" for the computer & EVERYTHING ON IT! 

Dear Hard Drive,
You are now my newest enemy. Just looking at you makes me nausiated and causes furry to fire up inside my chest. What made you think it was ok to crap our on us the same day as our laptop? Hmmmm???? Oh, what's that....silence again....incredible-you have nothing to say except "the disk you inserted could not be read. please eject". Well that's just not good enough. You have all my kids' pictures from infancy to present inside you, all the paperwork for both businesses, and every curriculum document I created since the day I started teaching. How am I supposed to replace all those things????? How!!!! YOU WERE THE BACKUP PLAN! Just so you know-there is no insurance for you when you get "sick", and your hefty $1200 data recovery bill isn't really in our budget. Thanks for considering that.

Thank goodness for my iPad. I'm telling you I'd be lost without at least the internet. I mean does anyone remember the world without things such as: Google, Ebay, Etsy, Facebook, Pinterest & Blogger? Sounds like the firey pits of hell to me!

So starts the shopping for another beloved iMac (which we've been saving for but didn't expect the need to come THIS quickly!). So nice of the billionaire Apple corporation to offer a teacher discount of $100. Not. We've been purchasing Macs for at least a decade now-and that discount used to be 10%.....well when your computer costs $1600 that would have been $160....but not now. Typical Rotten luck I've got. Typical!

Awwww SHUCKS

One of our favorite things about fall: U-PICK CORN.
We went after school today and picked 30 ears of corn for $6! What a steal! The kids spent a good 10 minutes shucking & I blanched. We are set for winter! Nothing like fresh sweet corn on the cob when it is snowing out :)