In our ongoing study of plants, I thought it was important to look a little closer at some of the local plant products we eat. Last week I brought in a bag of fresh cranberries and a photobook I made after Colin went to visit the Maylands cranberry farm when he was in preschool. The May family is cranberry royalty here in Richmond, which is the leading commercial cranberry growing region in Canada. A little trivia for you!
The students were each given two fresh cranberries - one to eat and one to "dissect". They were asked to observe them using all their senses and record their observations in their scientists' notebooks. I couldn't believe how many students (close to all) had never eaten a fresh cranberry. You can imagine their surprise when we cut the cranberries open to find this:
Not what they expected at all! They looked at the little pockets and seeds with magnifying glasses.
And then they made prints with some red paint.
Lots of the students wanted to include the cranberry seeds or a bit of the skin in their notebooks so we taped them in. They are learning the importance of collecting samples!
The next day we watched a video called Cranberry Bounce which was filmed on the May farms here in Richmond. My sons loved getting this video out from the library when they were younger (and remembered it well when I previewed it at home last week). The video shows all the steps in the cranberry's life cycle and the different methods for harvesting it. It also shows several things you can make with cranberries which gave the students lots of ideas ;)
When we were using the Smartboard later that afternoon, we did a graph to ask the students what they would prefer to make with the fresh cranberries. Cranberry muffins were the preference with cranberry sauce also a request.
So this week we made cranberry sauce. The students thought it was fun to hear the cranberries <pop> as they cooked. Each child took home a small container to share with their families. They also taste-tested pure cranberry juice.
And today we made cranberry muffins.
Lots of great math and science involved as we tripled the recipe and discussed chemical reactions!
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