Our Cranberry Day

November 21, 2013
There are days when I begin on track but quickly take a detour! Last week I had one of these detour days. Before I explain our detour I will give a little background as to why I derailed. This time of year the girls and I make lots of cranberry bread and muffins. We like using cranberries as much as we can while they are in season. A couple of weeks ago we were excited to find this recipe for Sugared Cranberries. YUM! We made these and threw some into muffins (just the soaked ones, before rolling in sugar). We also really enjoyed eating them after the second step (rolling them in sugar). We kept them in the fridge and would just go eat a few here and there. They were a fun treat. Jessica at Shower of Roses has a recipe for these using them in cupcakes and decorating the top with them. You can see it here under "snack time" about half way down the page.

 So, since we have been all about cranberries these past few weeks I became very excited when I read the latest Five in a Row blog post . I have enjoyed reading the book Cranberry Thanksgiving with my young kiddos but I really liked the other ideas I read in the post. It got me thinking about a quick mini-unit on cranberries, and there you have it-DETOUR!! We had such a fun day!

 We watched some YouTube videos on harvesting cranberries. Then we filled a container with cranberries and poured water in as if to flood a bog. Of course this led to tons of water splashing, cranberries bouncing -all-over-the-kitchen- fun. Lots of giggles ensued!

 While the kids played a bit I printed off some basic activities to complete a simple mini lapbook of sorts. A few things I found were:

~A fun little activity book at Wisconsin Cranberry Growers Association

~Cranberry Thanksgiving printables at Homeschool Share

~A cranberry coloring page

~Some great resources at the Cape Cod Cranberry Growers Association. There are some really helpful teacher resources and the frequently asked questions section has some facts about cranberries that we used in our mini lapbook.

~Some more great facts at Ocean Spray

~And some great activities in the Five in a Row free FOLD&LEARNs™. I can't redistribute these to you but if you subscribe to the Five in a Row Blog they will send you a link to free FOLD&LEARNs™ and the Cranberry Thanksgiving FOLD&LEARNs™ will be included.

On to the fun stuff!

We played....

We baked....

We bounced...

And we created...

Here is a recipe for Cranberry Apple Crisp. It is soooo good! I have since made it again! The day we did this cranberry unit I had already planned to make this Cranberry Chicken recipe, so that went perfectly with the days theme.


And I don't know how I have missed this all these years, but did you know you can freeze them?! We will be stocking up to have cranberry goodness all year!

Have fun!
Jen