Thursday, September 22, 2011

FIAR: How To Make an Apple Pie and See the World

Tot School


We started rowing our first FIAR (Five in a Row, Volume I) book today, How To Make an Apple Pie and See the World. It was a huge success. I decided to start us off with a little trip around the world, following along with the book, to collect all the items for our Apple Pie sensory box.

We used a big map that we got from Costco a few years ago. We started by naming the different continents and oceans, something we have been talking about during our Ocean Study...


We then read the book and followed along on our own map. First, we took a boat to Italy...



 Once we were in Italy, we went on the Patio to cut some wheat grass that we had planted in the spring (and that was very dry by now).

We bundled our wheat and placed it on the map (Italy). 

 We then loaded the wheat on our train and road to France...


In France, we found some chickens (from our Baby Farm Animals Toob), which we also loaded on the train. 


Smiley decided to build a train track from France, all the way to Sri Lanka :)


In Sri Lanka, we picked up some cinnamon. We loaded all our good on a car and drove to England. 




In England, we found a cow. 

 We packed everything on a banana boat and crossed the Atlantic Ocean to Jamaica.

On our way there, we picked up some sea salt...

We added some sugar cane in Jamaica (pretend sugar cane, since I didn't find any at the store)...

 Smiley loaded everything in his airplane. Loading and unloading the airplane was his favorite part, and he continued to play this over the course of the day...

He loved that we almost forgot our apples, and enjoyed shaking all the other ingredients out of the airplane over Vermont ;)



 We picked eight apples in Vermont and fed one to the cow, one to each chicken (Smiley thought it was unfair to only give one apple), and one to the child...





I then gathered all our ingredients and created a sensory box for the kids to play with. I used wheat for the bottom, added our what grass, our plastic chicken and plastic cow (with a little pitcher for "milk"), our child figure (from a Plan Toy), cinnamon, our pretend sugar cane with two raw sugar cubes, 5 apples under an "apple tree" and a salt shaker. 



I then added the vehicles we used on our trip and a few extra buckets, cups, bottles, funnel, and spoons and  let the kids get at it :)

They LOVED it!








3 comments:

  1. You have some great activities here. Love that map! What a great Costco find. I see you getting a lot of use out of it over the years. I am a new follower from the Preschool Corner Hop. Vicky @ www.messforless.net

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  2. The map and "trip" are so cute! What a great idea! Visiting from Tot School.

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  3. Wow, what a great learning experience for your kiddos. That is such a beautiful map too!

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