Lucky Beans and Crockpot Applesauce

Crock Pot Applesauce... a wonderful applesauce recipe! We substitute 1 tablespoon white grape juice for the lemon juice. It's the secret ingredient!

Just in case it disappears off the Internet, here it is:

4 lbs tart apples (peeled and cut into chunks)

1⁄2 cup sugar

1⁄2 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1 cup water

1 tablespoon white grape juice

Mix apples (about 12 cups) with cinnamon and sugar and put into crock pot. Stir. Pour water and white grape juice over apples. Cook on low for 6 hours or on high for 3 hours. For the perfect texture, mash with a potato masher.

Easy enough to make in the classroom, and everyone gets to taste it before the school day is over!

(If you find you are out of cinnamon, substituting lime juice for the white grape juice and ground ginger for the ground cinnamon is a tasty solution!)

This worked really well in our Math class today for a review of Muliplication (and Lucky Beans by Becky Birtha) and an introduction to Division. I also incorporated estimating and making tally marks.

Yesterday I happened to make Crockpot Yogurt in my medium sized crockpot, and I thought it might be fun for them to be there for the big reveal when I unwrapped the bath towels. And then I could compare the two side by side and show them that all crockpots are not the same size.

The crockpot at the bottom of the picture really is smaller... you just can't tell because it is generously swathed in bath towels.

I'm going to pause here and put in my Crockpot Yogurt recipe as well. That's another one that I don't want to disappear from the Internet!

Pour 1/2 gallon of whole milk into a medium sized crockpot.

Warm it on Low for 3 hours.

Unplug and let it stand for 2 1/2 hours.

Use a wire whisk to thoroughly stir in about 1 cup of PLAIN yogurt as a starter culture. (If you are doing this with a class, you can also ladle some warm milk into a large jar along with the yogurt starter. Put on the lid and let everyone shake it vigorously to blend the yogurt into the milk. Then pour all of that into the crockpot and stir well.)

Note: You want the yogurt cultures to be well distributed throughout the warm milk but don't take too long, because it is important for the milk to keep its heat.

Take the crock insert out of its base and wrap it with three bath towels (I do two around the sides and one over the top).

Leave it on the kitchen counter overnight (minimum of 12 hours). If I'm making yogurt with a class, I like to start the milk warming at 9:15 am, add the cultures at 2:45 pm, and let it stand until breakfast the next day. They are always very excited to taste it! (The yogurt is unsweetened but you can serve with fresh fruit or stir in a bit of jam.)

Store it the fridge once it has cultured.

We first did a review of the estimation strategy in Lucky Beans (fill a jar with beans and count the beans, empty the jar, use that same jar as a measuring tool and fill it with water and pour the water into the crock, continue to fill the crock with water in order to calculate how many jarfuls of water fill it completely, then multipliy the number of beans in the jar x the number of jars that fit in the crock). We talked about the difference between a wild guess and an estimate that was based on some evidence. I asked them to estimate how many cups of water would fit in my big crockpot. Then after 10 cups of water, I gave them a chance to revise their estimates. The answer was 19, so the child who said 18 and the child who said 20 tied for the win!

stopping after 10 cups to revise estimates

We will continue to work with estimation activities over the next few months. It is a skill that takes some practicing. Keeping track of how many cups of water we were putting in the crockpot also gave us a chance to practice making tally marks. PLUS, it was exciting! Even the big kids came to watch and offered their estimates.

The other fantastic thing about making Crockpot Applesauce today was that it gave me a chance to act out being Mr. Divide, and portion the yumminess out fairly!

four silks in our dress up colors to play the characters

green - Addition - Farmer Plus

blue - Subtraction - Mr. Minus

yellow - Multiplication - Tommy Times

red - Division - Mr. Divide

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