Finishing our Maple Syrup unit study

We finished up our study of maple syrup last week. We read a number of books and did some mini books to put in our scrapbook.

Books we read:
The Gift of the Tree by Alvin Tresselt
The Sugaring Off Party by Jonathan London

The Sugaring Off Party was a very cute book about a young boy who is talking with his grandmother about her first sugaring off party. It brought back many memories of being with my grandparents.

The Gift of the Tree is another cute book. It takes you through the woods visiting all the animals in the forest. It talks about different trees in the forest. This is a must read for children.

On Saturday we went to the Genesee Country Museum on a Sap, Sugar, Syrup tour. We had so much fun. The day started with a wonderful pancake breakfast.

This was an all you can eat breakfast. It was delish, with real maple syrup. The kids noticed how different it tastes. We even bought some for home.

After breakfast we headed out into the woods. There were many stations set up along the way. The first station showed us how to tap a tree. The above picture is Andrew drilling a hole. It was more difficult than it seemed.

The next station was to show us how sap is boiled down into syrup. Here we are looking into the boiler. My parents went with us along with our nephews.

Then it was off on our hike in the woods. We walked about 5 miles total. It was such a nice walk. There were different trees labeled and a little history about the area.

All along the way we saw many trees tapped collecting sap. The museum makes their own syrup. You will see that later.

This gentleman talked to us about how sap collection has changed through the years. From wooden buckets to steel ones. The different drills used back in the 1800's till today.

The kids were able to see how the sap was collected and carried. Using a yolk they were able to carry buckets of sap or in this case water. They enjoyed themselves, Andrew would like us to get one for him.

Here we were able to see one of the yolks being made. Andrew and our nephew Ryan loved watching this.

Here museum interpreters are telling us about the process of making maple sugar. Since they had no way to preserve the syrup they turned it into sugar. Nothing like the smell of wood burning and sweet sap! They used this instead of white sugar in our area in the 1800's. It was so interesting on how they do it. Each one of the kettles holds sap, they are all at different stages, but start out as the same amount of sap.

We then went out into the village and learned how maple syrup was used back in the 1800's. The kids were so good and asked a lot of questions. This young man was really good at answering the questions asked, even if some were pretty silly!

This is the cook at one of the houses, she is making maple oatmeal cookies! YUM!! I'm going to try and get the recipe because they were the best ever!! We were even allowed to taste them. Of course they were made in a "safe" kitchen as they say.

This is the village farm house. Usually in the summer time they are showing how cheese was made on a farm in the 1800's. But today she was making butter and a noon meal with maple syrup.

Here Andrew is trying his hand at churning butter. The kids didn't realize how much work went into it. When the woman asked my 3 year old nephew if he wanted to make some butter he said, "No I buy mine at the store". It was so funny.

Another stop was for the kids to make a tin ornament to take home with them. Here they are practicing before actually nailing into the tin.

My Husband ended up finishing up the ornaments. We have the tin plates hanging on our windows.

We had such a wonderful time here. Since we live pretty close to this museum we go here all the time. I'm really looking forward to sharing more of the museum with you later in the season.

Gym Class

So many times we forget about gym class. So last year my husband decided to utilize our park not far from us. Thursday was the kids first day of gym class at the park. They love it, although I can just imagine what people think seeing our "poor" children out there doing laps and such!

Getting all warmed up. This shot is of Katie and Hannah.

Our little soldiers! Getting ready for jumping jacks.

Leg stretches...I'm not really sure what the technical name is for it. Maybe lunges...Look the gym teacher is even doing it!

Make gym class fun and make it a whole family event. I had fun taking pictures of them. I also took pictures of the trees and birds.

Maple Syrup

We are almost done with our maple syrup unit. Since we have all been sick I have not been able to post about it.

Books we read:
Little House in the Big Woods by Laura Ingalls Wilder
Sugar Bush Spring by Marsha Wilson Chall
At Grandpa's Sugar Bush by Margaret Carney
Backyard Sugarin' by Rink Mann
Sugar on Snow by Nancy Dingman Watson
Maple Harvest by Elizabeth Gemming
Sugaring Time by Kathryn Lasky

After reading the book that day we did a small book to add in our scrapbooks. All of the mini books we did I found through Homeschool Share.

Mini Books we completed:
Maple producer maps this was a great activity for all ages. They had to color in the state listed also some in Canada.

Vocabulary about maple trees. There are a number of different little books you can complete with this.

Copywork book which is a small poem for the children to copy. The kids loved doing this. I took it one step further and had them copy some scripture that had to do with anything sweet. (Ex 15:25; Judges 14:18;Ps 119:103;Ps 55:14; Prov 16:24) They copied one verse a day and put them into their journals.

Tools for tapping is a book listing all the tools you will need for tapping the trees.

We even went outside and measured around our maple trees to determine if our trees are big enough to tap. We have 2 trees that are!! So we will be gathering tools for next year.

Sickness has hit!

We are sloooowly still working on our maple unit study. But starting Sunday night our son Andrew got the flu. I knew it was only a matter of time before it went through the house. Sure enough, Tuesday-our daughter Katrina, Thursday-my other daughter Hannah and I came down with horrible colds. I still sound like a goose! LOL!

We have all just been huddled on the couch reading many many books about maple syrup. The Lord knew that we were going to need all those books from the library! It has been quite a week. I'll be back Monday with a follow up on the books we read and some more projects.

Have a great weekend!

Maple Syrup Unit

Today we read a very informational book, "Sugaring Season, Making Maple Syrup" by Diane Burns. It took us step by step of the process of making syrup. Later today we will walk around our property (depending on how we all feel, we've been sick) and identify the trees around our house. I know we have at least 3 maple trees.

The temperature plays a very important part in getting the best quality sap from the trees. The best days are between March and April, you can also get sap in September and October. The fall sap is not as sweet.

Steps to making maple syrup: A lot of my information came from the Cornell website on maple syrup production.

• locate and measure your maple tree. Use a tree identification book if you are unsure of what a sugar maple looks like. A tree needs to be at least 31 1/2 inches around before you can tap it. This will save on damaging the tree.
• tap your tree using a drill, tap, hammer, bucket. Drill a hole about the size of a man's thumb, gently use the hammer to put the tap into the hole, place the bucket under the tap. A normal tap will produce about 10 gallons of sap per season.
• Once collected the sap needs to be cooked down into syrup. This is something you need to watch very closely. From my research I've learned that you can do it on the grill outdoors. Which is what we may do if our trees are big enough. The boiling will bring any impurities to the surface that you can skim off. Watch it VERY closely at this point so it does not boil over.

For anyone living in New York State here is the website for the Maple Events. This website has a lot of information on maple syrup and one of my favorite things...RECIPES!

Tomorrow we will read another book and do some more mini books for our scrapbooks. Have a sweet day.

Maple Syrup Unit

Today was the 3rd official day of our maple syrup unit study. I got most of this unit from the Fall 2008 issue of The Old Schoolhouse magazine. The lapbooking mini books I got from Homeschool Share. Then we added a lot of books. Our children learn best this way, and I love it also.

I am so excited about this unit that I can hardly contain myself! One of my favorite childhood memories is walking into the woods with my Dad to tap trees in March. I miss being able to do that. But we do have 3 maple trees on our property we may use in the future. It takes 40-45 gallons of sap to make 1 gallon of syrup.

Book we read: "Sugar on Snow" by Nan Parson Rossiter.

This was a wonderful cute book. It is about 2 brothers who were so excited to help gather sap and make syrup.

After reading the book we worked on our lapbooks. This is a wonderful way for children to remember what they have learned, while making mini books.

This is Katie and her book. Instead of using file folders for our lapbooks we wanted something to keep everything together in one book. We put everything in a scrapbook.

This is Hannah and her book. I let them pick a place to put their mini books, it is their project after all. She is so proud of her book.





Here is Andrew's book. He is such a perfectionist, everything has to be just so. He did school in his pajamas today because he was up all night sick. I was surprised he was excited to sit at the table today. I was ready to give him a sick day.




When Matt gets home from work the kids usually run to the door excited to show him what we did today.

Welcome

Welcome to my new blog. This is where I will journal about our daily tasks. I will tell you what I liked and did not like about certain products we have tried. I will also list my favorite homeschool/teacher websites. Most of all the websites I visit are free. I will also talk about some great tools for those homeschooling or are thinking about homeschooling.