September School Days

September was all about food, from the nutritious to the yummy. This month we focused on Nutrition, Italy and Johnny Appleseed.

Nutrition

Timmy and Grace had to keep track of how many fruits and veggies they are each day for a week. The graph showed they had to eat 5 a day. Pretty sure all 5 were fruit servings.

We learned about the new healthy plate. Apparently the food pyramid that I learned about in school is no more. We drew the healthy plate on the board and listed different foods that could fit in each category. Then they had to pack a healthy lunchbox.

I printed and laminated different foods and they made their own grocery lists and then I let them grocery shop. They loved this.

We did a good tasting experiment. Timmy likes everything really. Grace not so much.

They played a game to see how many foods they could correctly place in the correct category. It’s so fun watching them learn new things like what dairy and grains mean.

We did an experiment with drinks to see how much sugar was in each one. This was amazing to me too! It is pretty disgusting.

Timmy is officially the healthy police now. He questions everything I make. “But mom how much sugar is in this?”

Italy

We are visiting the different countries in Epcot as part of our Geography studies. Of course we started with Italy because it’s my favorite. My great grandmother was an original off the boat from Italy New Yorker.

We colored the flag and map, took turns trying to find Italy on the globe and read lots of books. We learned some Italian words and special monuments. We even painted under our desks like Leonardo Da Vinci.

My favorite part was sharing family recipes with them. Teaching them to make our families sauce was such a special moment for me. Learning alongside them how to make fresh pasta was so fun. And then watching them eat it and asking Daddy what do you think of the food we made. The best. They also made their own pizza, meatballs and Alfredo. Turns out Timmy loves meatballs. I was so shocked.

Then at the end of the month we headed to Epcot. We bought our “passports” and headed to Italy. Epcot’s program is so great. In the passport comes stickers for each country and it’s a scavenger hunt to find the things on the sticker and then you place them in your passport with that country. When your done a native of that country stamps your passport. Then they have a craft set up and speak to you in their language. We then went to eat at a fancy Italian restaurant. They learned that Italian dip bread in oil not butter. We tested out some calamari, only Lydia liked it. Then they had spaghetti and meatballs. For dessert we had tiramisu and they loved it. I also let them try cannolis and gelato. They didn’t like the cannoli.

Johnny Appleseed

Every year we celebrate Johnny Appleseed in September since Timmy is 2 years old actually. Some of our sweetest memories with friends. This year we focused on how Johnny was a Christian. My favorite thing to teach my kids is about their faith. I love that we can live a life were Jesus is in everything we do.

We made Johnny Appleseed hats with our friends and planted some seeds of our own. Then we made an apple tree snack.

We even did some apple bobbing. We read the book A 3 in 1 Picture of God and it was all about how an Apple explains the Trinity and did a worksheet to go with it.

With our church friends we did an apple printing scripture.

Then we did s sink float experiment with the different parts of the apple. It was interesting to learn that just because as one the Apple may float, separately the pieces might sink.

We ended this unit with making homemade applesauce. The kids did it all start to finish and it came out delicious. Peeling an apple was a project in itself be because we needed 8 apples and it isn’t easy for little hands to use a peeler.

When we cut the Apple into pieces the kids wanted to save the seeds and Timmy discovered that one of the seeds had already sprouted inside the apple. Even I was amazed by that.