Needle Felted Carrots

Last week I attended a needle felting class to learn how to make fruits and vegetables.

The teacher had samples of carrots, beets, pears, and a pumpkin.

We started learning a carrot and I was so excited by how easy it was that I decided to make a little garden of them for my grand daughter.

She loves them.

We found a couple of rabbits for her to feed, instead of herself.

The carrots are different sizes as they do take time to make and I wanted to get 5 done during class time.

So one for her and

one for the rabbit.

She harvested all the carrots with no problem until she reached the last one.

It was stuck in the ground and she pulled and pulled

but it wouldn't come up.

She let go and signed for help.

I showed her how to use two hands.

One to hold the container in place and the other to pull the carrot.

Yay it worked!

When she was finished feeding herself and the rabbit she put all the carrots back into the garden.

Ready for another picking tomorrow.

In An Apple Tree

Our families have been sharing their harvest with us,

which is great for our snack table.

To build on the harvest concept I set up a small apple orchard.

 I placed two of our fake trees in a big box, that I covered with a green blanket.

I put them in the box in hopes that it will corral the apples and they will

not be rolling around the room.

So far so good.

 Over the years I've collected a variety of fake apples

and I placed most of them under the trees.

But some I hid in the trees.

To encourage the children to look up in the trees I sang this fingerplay

"Way up high in the apple tree,

two little apples smiled at me.

I shook that tree as hard as I could.

Down came the apples

Mmmm, mmmm good!

They enjoyed shaking the trees to see the apples fall.

They also enjoyed hiding the apples back in the trees.

 Once they picked their apples they could wash them.

An amazingly simple idea of water, apples and toothbrushes

can keep children busy for some time.

Harvesting Spuds

We participated in BC Agriculture's Spud in Tubs program

again this year.

We shared our tubs with a grade one class and our big buddies

grew spuds too.

Today we harvested the potatoes to get ready for our celebration

which will be on Wednesday.

We explored the tops and the bottoms

(stalks and roots).

There were not many leaves left since the bunnies,

that live in our school yard, found a way into the garden.

While we dug for potatoes we found some of the seed potatoes

that started this experiment.

We laid them out to count (about 200) and compared how many were in each tub.

Then took them inside for a washing.

The children enjoyed using a toothbrush to scrub the potatoes.

They talked about brushing their own teeth with 

a toothbrush.

Today we made Potato Scones.

 I mixed the flour, baking powder and cold butter

then the children added mashed potatoes.

We used our hands to mix the mash potatoes into the flour.

Very few were hesitant about getting their hands messy.

They were each given a small amount and they rolled it out flat.

Then put them in the frying pan.

Flip when golden brown.

We decided they looked and tasted more like pancakes

then scones.

We topped them with raspberry jam or apple butter.

Delicious.

Harvesting Spuds–Comparing Size

        
As we pulled the plants out of the dirt most of them broke off but one gave us
                           promise that there were potatoes below.
 
     I loosened the soil then the children started to dig and find more potatoes.
                    
It was obvious that it would take a lot of work to dig to the bottom of the tub
                             so we dumped it on the ground.
                     
    
Eureka we found lots of potatoes, roots and the seed potatoes that began it all.

       
                        
I brought out a comparison chart with three different sized circles; small, medium and large.  The children sorted, compared and asked about the sizes.  There were a lot of medium sized potatoes.  Do we count the little bitty ones?  Of course which brought our total from this tub to 58.

  
We took them into the school and washed them.  Which gave us a chance to take a closer look at each.  We saw bits of dirt stuck in little holes (the eyes).  Some wanted to taste the potatoes fresh (raw) from the garden.
              
      Now the are all ready to be cooked.  Next post I’ll share our first recipe.