Harvest

I just finished Roasting Chestnuts (see How to Roast Chestnuts -- the step where you roll them in an old towel really helps) and we're having turkey and gravy and cranberry sauce and cornbread and roasted chestnuts and spinach and pumpkin pie for dinner! Yum yum. Today my students and I made jam. Super-simple Strawberry Freezer Jam -- we had 2 cups of mashed strawberries and 1 1/2 cups of sugar. The recipe suggestion was 4 cups of fruit and 3 cups of sugar. Cutting the recipe in half meant some opportunities for fraction work, one of my favorite reasons to cook with students! Tomorrow we will taste it on some hot oatmeal. I used the story First Woman and the Strawberry: A Cherokee Legend (Native American Legends)to introduce the jam-making (it's an excellent Native American legend in its own right, also the perfect tie-in to the project) and we also used a form from Barbara Dewey's form drawing book to go with the story (the one almost at the top of page 3, that looks something like a fish hook with three little loops coming down the side of it, this was the path that she walked, the loops were her stomping angrily around the three tempting foods that Great Spirit sent, the end of the form is where she smells the strawberries, stops short, gathers them, and decides to go back).

Tomorrow is Michaelmas so we are doing a Michaelmas story as a read-aloud and also one at morning circle. Can't make bread dragons, though, because it's also picture day at the school and the children will all be dressed up in their best clothes. Not conducive to getting your hands into bread dough. I also love the Harvest Loaf story in All Year Round (Lifeways)and I've done it with my Sunday School class. But instead this year we will do the Michaelmas chapter from The Seven-Year-Old Wonder Bookand "The Far Country" (All Year Round, page 296).


Happy Harvest to everyone!