An Apple a Day: Apple Science and History

Kristie, this week’s “Featured Fridays” blogger, can be found  over at Kristie’s Notes .

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 An Apple a Day:  Apple Science and History.

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It’s been a long time since I’ve stopped to think about apples beyond buying, eating, cooking, etc. It was neat to take the time to relearn, with the kids, all sorts of things about them from how an apple is grown to how apple trees were spread throughout the country over 100 years ago.

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Apple Science

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We first looked at how an apple grew when we visited the library for Story Time. We read “How Do Apples Grow?” by Betsy Maestro. The kids were able to see how the apple blossom became an apple, while learning the parts of a flower and seeing how bees pollinate flowers.

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We then did an experiment from Janice VanCleave’s book “Science Around the Year”.

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The kids discovered how their sense of smell and sense of taste work together to sense an apple’s taste. They were blindfolded, then had to plug their noses and try to discern which of three different juices the apple juice was.

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After they tried to find the apple taste with their noses plugged, they could then let go of their noses and try again. It was MUCH easier to determine which juice was the apple juice when they could smell too!

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We also looked at an apple’s symmetry. I cut an apple from top to bottom and another through the middle. The apple cut from top to bottom has bilateral symmetry, while the one cut through the middle has radial symmetry.

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The kids also painted on the apple halves and attempted to make stamped prints of the symmetry.

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Unfortunately, I didn’t do the best job cutting the apples and the prints didn’t turn out the greatest, but it was still fun!

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Apple History

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I’m sure apples have a lot more history than what we went into, but I thought it would be fun to learn about Johnny Appleseed and his role in the distribution of apple trees across the United States. I picked up the book “Who was Johnny Appleseed?” by Joan Holub, and the kids and I spent many nights, during reading time, fascinated by Johnny Appleseed.

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Throughout the book, the kids also learned other tidbits of history, like how people lived and traveled in Johnny’s time, as well as about wars of that time. Beyond the history, we also picked up a few fun apple facts, such as there are over 7,500 varieties of apples worldwide, the most popular apple in the U.S. is Red Delicious and it takes 36 apples to make 1 gallon of cider!

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Well, that’s about all I have for the An Apple a Day series. I hope you enjoyed reading about our apple adventures as much as I enjoyed sharing them with you!
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Today’s “Featured Fridays” post, “An Apple a Day: Apple Science and History”, was written by Kristie, blog author of  Kristie’s Notes.

Kristie is a Stay at Home Mommy to two beautiful children. She loves veggie gardening, baking crafts and spending time with her precious family.