How to Make an Apple Pie and See the World Lapbook

We have FINALLY completed this lapbook series after 5 long drawn sessions in April through May with much interruption in between. I conducted about 1hr of lesson once a week. If you are new to lapbooking, do hop over What is Lapbooking to gain a better idea. I have included a free lapbook on The tiger who comes for tea.

As there are aplenty of great lapbook lessons on How to Make an Apple Pie and See the World, I shall just share what we have done to tailor to my Singaporean and christian context.

1) We started with the Life Cycle of an apple tree. I used an apple and the 5 senses to teach the parts of an apple. I find using the real apple provides a tangible connection to the labeling of parts. I also downloaded the odd and even activity sheets for classification of the numbers.

2) We looked through videos and books on Seasons before I illustrated the below for their activity.

3) We had a sensory play session on our mega map together with the cards I printed out from the internet. It was amusing to see how all my 3 kids scrambled to gether all the relevant materials I needed from their treasure boxes of toys!

I will give you all the relevant links at the end of the page. This process of recalling the story strengthens memory as they travel the world in the sequence of the story with the appropriate vehicles. They have to search for the countries, the ingredient they are to get from there and proceed to the next destination.

They will also check out what continent each country is located in.

They had great fun in this playful journey! Check out their fun at this Instagram Video.

All these will aid in the below activity sheets below found in the web link of Delightful Learning.

4) Art is my absolute way to teach concepts of 3 Dimensional form versus 2 Dimensional flat surface. The clay activity provides a hands on approach to learning fractions. This JOVI air dry clay is from The Art Friend. It is reasonably priced and easy to use.

Guess why the Apple is painted blue? As an art educator and a christian, I have introduced my own artist references and helped them to think out of the apple and the globe. We also learnt on simple fractions like half and a quarter with the Apple pie clay.

Basically, I use the power of Art to challenge the kids with this question.

‘How can we combine (put the two items together) the globe and apple to create into 1 item?’ They took quite a while to brainstorm. With more guiding questions like

• What are the similarities of these 2 items? (e.g. both are roundish/like a ball/have weight)
• What is the difference between them? (e.g. the globe ball is bigger than the clay apple/there is a map printed on the ball/the apple is red/apple has a stem while the globe does not)
• How can I make these 2 become only 1 round item with both of the qualities (e.g. the map/the stem) from the 2 items?

I received different interesting reasoning from the kids. One child mentioned how about placing the stem on the globe? While the other child suggested painting the map onto the apple clay. I welcomed all suggestions and affirmed them. I dug further into their responses- How can I do the suggestions? The first child said to stick the stem with a tape. The second child said to use paint. I probed further on how workable their solutions were before concluding that all their ideas were great! For the purpose of our project, we would paint the clay apple into a globe to apply their knowledge about the continents.

Why do they need to do this artwork anyway?

As a christian, I find this a powerful way of expressing how God loves

1. the whole world (the globe)
2. You and Me the individual as the ‘apple of His eyes’.

That’s where I connected the verse Psalm 17:8 and John 3:16 appropriate to bring into this lesson.

Psalm 17:8a  Keep me as the apple of your eye

John 3:16 For God so loved the world that He gave his one and only begotten son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.

I also tied in artist Renee Magritte’s ‘The son of man’, as a reference for their art. This realistic painting is however illusionary with so many telltale signs of the ‘impossible’. I got my hubby to be the model for our artwork to mimic his work just for laughs and fun!

You see, the amount of thinking, transference of ideas and knowledge that goes into creating a piece of meaningful art can be extra rewarding when we allow time, space and create challenges for the young minds to grow out of the box. The processes of artful thinking when harnessed at the opportune time, can reap a harvest of creativity and develop skills for practical living.

Click Artist & Scripture Ref  for my GrowingHearts’ Art lapbook segment below.

Ta-Dah! Our ‘Apple-Globe’ Artwork! Check out my instagram Video of how E coloured it.

5) A serious Books Affair!

I Love our Singapore Library! It has tons of great resources we can use for our lapbooking lessons. Here are a few good books on other subjects related to this lapbook content.

• I am impressed by Robin Page’s Questions and answers about a familiar fowl. He gives the breeds of chicken, the parts and differences of the female and male, to the stats of eggs and life cycle! I love the end section of what happens inside a fertilised egg. Chick it out!

• This is a great book to expose children to the process of how food are grown, raised and caught. The beauty lies in the multicultural and racial people doing what they’re good at, and presenting facts to us in a real and hearty way with beautiful photos.

• I love books that illustrates clearly the facts and processes of the real world in a child friendly way. This book is terrific! We discussed how things function in the real world for E. J read this and salivating wishing he has such a sumptuous lunchbox!!

• I finally found this treasure that I read in a great review Here. This absolutely gives the apple a 180 degree change of perspectives!

6) An Apple Berry Pie Making Finale!

With such a perfect pie making ending of the book, how can we not do likewise??

My daughter had waited so patiently for this day to finally arrive.

As my mummy instincts wisely told me, I searched for an apple-berry recipe instead of pure apple pie. We used Jamie Olivers Recipe. 

I also showed my girl the below video to learn how to make the crust without following the end part of prebaking it.

Here’s a visual process!

I had used only Half of the amount of ingredients from Olivers’ recipe as my baking pan was not big enough. However, that amount was insufficient for my bottom and top pastry. Therefore I just made do with a top layer of pastry and it turned out unexpectedly nice! However, through this process, we discovered the family does not have a sweet and sour tooth for apple pie. ; P  We still managed to finish the whole pie with the company of a friend and her vanilla ice cream! That somehow balanced out all the flavours into a delightful experience.

Just an additional photo of how we ended with making our dinner.

In conclusion, we really enjoyed the enriching experience of doing lapbooking with hands on activities and play.

Here are the main resources that I gathered for my activities.

• Delightful Learning  (Most of my resources comes from here. However, there are aplenty I did not use)
• Homeschoolingmum2mags

In conclusion, lapbooking is a fun and enriching way to engage learning. However, all these preparation was done years ago for my no.1 and I laminated them in view of teaching my 3rd child down the road (which finally happened). I was a stay at home mum then, with only 1 child. Due to my strong interest in education, I spent a lot of time researching, adapting and creating my own resources along the way. As I am working part-time now, I know such lapbooking preparations are laborious and might not be possible if I were to embark on my own at this stage. I am glad I can just re-use my plans done years ago. Please feel free to adapt accordingly and find the most beneficial fit for your family’s needs.

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