Nature Study ~ Apples {Autumn Series}

We are surrounded by apple orchards around here…well, we can’t actually see them from our home {although I’d love to someday be able to walk into my backyard and pick some apples from our very own tree :)}…but we do have three apple orchards in our little town ~ all less than ten minutes away.  For the past couple of years we have taken advantage of all of the fresh, local apples by buying apples by the bushel…and using them to make lots of yummy applesauce, mini apple pies, apple crisp…and of course just eating them the way God made them :).

So last week’s nature study from the Autumn 2010 Nature Study ebook was right up our alley…

One day at lunch I pulled two different varieties of apples from our refrigerator {we had just been to the orchard and picked up about 15 lbs of apples}.  I placed them on the table and we took a bit of time observing them before I cut into them.  We compared their shape, size, and color.

We then cut into them and talked about the differences between the flesh, the seeds, the core, the stem, and finally the taste. 

After we finished our lunch, we headed outside with our apple notebooking pages {provided in the Autumn Series Nature Study ebook}, a mini bucket of colored pencils, a clipboard for each kiddo, and a pile of apple books.

Each kiddo chose a book for me to read, and I read to them while they completed their notebooking pages.  I gave ds3 an apple coloring page {link provided in the ebook} instead of a notebooking page.

I think all three kiddos did a fabulous job on their papers…I absolutely LOVE the printables that Barb supplied and linked to in this ebook.

I placed everyone’s papers into page protectors and filed them away in our family nature notebook.  Our nature notebook is filling up, thanks to these easy-to-do nature study challenges :)