Well, hello there! This is a guest post from Daddy, I've been putting off writing it for a while but here goes. Last fall, before Thanksgiving, I had the chance to volunteer in Holly's kindergarten classroom to help the kids make apple pie. They were doing a whole unit studying apples, learning the parts of the trees and the different things you can do with apples.
As a prelude to this, I had volunteered a few weeks before to help peel and slice apples into applesause and dried apples. There's a previous blog post with details of the crazy apple-peeler contraption they had. It was so amazing I ordered one for myself, the kids loved it. And nobody sliced off any fingers! That went so well that I was able to be convinced to volunteer for making pie -- after all, the previous task: mash up the apple slices and drop them into crock pot was practically the same thing as making pie crust from scratch, filling and still prepping all the apples, right? How hard could it be?
We worked in the back of the room. Meanwhile, the class went through their daily circle time routine, which involves reading a daily message from the board.
Morning Circle
Part 2
Meanwhile, we manned the pie making stations. We split it into two tables, Vicki helped with the slicing and peeling contraption, and the filling, and I supervised the crust-making table.
The kids did great, we did everything from scratch. Even though here I am showing them how to measure, they did all the measuring and scooping themselves.
The pastry blender in particular was a hit, the kids loved mashing the butter into the flour. They were a little reluctant to mush the flour and butter together with their hands but they got into it.
Penelope was a pro, she knew how to measure and level off the sugar for the filling without even being shown.
The kids also really liked the rolling pin, I think they all had some experience with rolling out play doh.
Finally, the big finish, dumping the filling mixture into the pie crust. This was pretty much the only part that I did myself, the rest of it was the kids.
The pie came together beautifully, and the kids were very excited about the whole thing. I think they all got to participate, too, and everyone had a good time.
Mrs. Kai took the pie home and baked it overnight. She sent us this picture of the whole class enjoying the pie the next morning. Holly is off on her own in the back -- she decided she just likes making pies but not eating them.
We had a lot of fun and the kids enjoyed it. Their next study unit is on marine mammals, so I'm looking around for some recipes involving sea lions or something. Curried walrus?
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