Clove Apples

Aunt Eliza had brought Ma a large red apple stuck full of cloves. How good it smelled! And it would not spoil, for so many cloves would keep it sound and sweet.

-Little House in the Big Woods by Laura Ingalls Wilder

Today we made clove apples. When I went on the search for cloves for 5 children*, I had no idea how expensive this could be. One little bottle of whole cloves was $10.50. Yikes! So I got one bottle and told the kids they could make a design like a heart or something like that. I just wanted them to have the experience of putting the cloves in and smelling the spice. Their apples actually turned out beautifully. The other nice part about this "project" is that all ages could do it.

*3 of the children are my own while the other two are students I tutor.

Here are some pictures:

DS4's apple

DD10 tried to clove a lemon. She drew a heart on it as a pattern for her cloves. This is all the further she got because it was very hard to get the cloves in. She even used a knife to poke little holes. The apples were much easier.

Hog Bladders and Butter

We started back into our routine this week and we are having a blast. We are reading a chapter a day from the Laura Ingalls Wilder series. We started yesterday with Little House in the Big Woods and today we made hog bladder balloons and butter. I would have rather made the balloons yesterday since they are mentioned in chapter 1, but the local meat store didn't have them available until late yesterday.

As we did each of the activities, we were able to discuss toys back in Laura's time. There was no mass market toy superstore back then. That is why Laura and Mary were thrilled to have a hog bladder to bat around. My plan was for the girls to take the balloons out in the yard to kick them around a little, but we are getting snow/rain /ice today and it's just not a good day to do that.

The bladders did have a little bit of a "smell" to them. I told them that the smell probably didn't bother Laura and Mary when you consider how often they bathed and the lack of things like deodorant.

Starting to get a little tired of shaking the jars.

We were also able to discuss all the work that went into making butter. I poured about 3/4 cup of heavy cream into a jelly jar and let the girls shake until we had butter. It took about 20 minutes and the girls were able to see the physical changes happening with the cream. After about 10 minutes they said they were getting tired. It was a lot of work to go through just for some butter. I explained that is why they didn't have exercise gyms back then either. They got exercise by default and probably didn't have to worry about diets to loose weight.

Mmmmmm...fresh creamy butter!

I hope the rest of the week is as fun as today was.

Happy New Year

Isn't it wonderful to have new beginnings? The holidays are definitely a time for me to regroup.

I am looking forward to tomorrow and the beginning of our study on Laura Ingalls Wilder. Our study will be based on The Prairie Primer by Margie Gray. I attempted to use The Prairie Primer two and a half years ago and I burned out very quickly. I tried to do every activity, every day. I spent hours gathering materials for an activity that would last 15 to 30 minutes then we would never go back to it.

This time, I am using The Prairie Primer, but am only doing selected activities. I plan to read a chapter a day with the kids. They will continue to do their Math U See books and Primary Language Lessons each day. At times we may take out Ray's Arthmetic and the McGuffey Readers so we can do lessons like Laura did.

This next week will be full with making butter, corn cob dolls, hog bladder balloons, cloved apples and oranges, and drawing Jack Frost. I am really looking forward to it and hope to post pictures as we go.