Johnny Appleseed Day!

We hosted a small apple unit study today to celebrate Johnny Appleseed Day. The kids had a couple of friends over (with the help of a great homeschool mom friend!) and we made Johnny Appleseed books filled with various apple crafts, experiments, math and geography studies related to apples and the story of John Chapman, a.k.a. Johnny Appleseed. The kids helped make Apple Muffins & Apple Pie and we enjoyed cider, applesauce and many different kinds of apples and the seeds inside--which we used to play a fun Apple Seed Toss game. Fun day!


One of the coolest projects we did was each of the kids picked an apple out of the bowl and studied it. They answered questions about it, filled out a worksheet (is it lopsided, does it have any dents or color streaks, is the stem long or short, etc.) and even named their apples. When they were done, they put the apples back into the bowl and we mixed all 9 of them up again, and the kids had to find their same apple again. It worked, they all could find their same apple. :)










And here's Disney's 1948 Johnny Appleseed movie on YouTube. :) (It's in multiple parts)


Apple Muffin Recipe
1 3/4 cups flour
2 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. cinnamon
1/2 tsp. nutmeg
pinch of salt
1 egg
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 cup applesauce
1 apple, peeled seeded and finely chopped
1/3 cup vegetable oil

Preheat oven to 350-degrees. Grease/paper 12 cup muffin pan. Sift dry ingredients in large bowl. In another bowl, mix egg, sugar, applesauce, apple and oil. Combine wet and dry. Diving into muffin cups, bake 20-25 minutes.