I walked by the book Cranberry Thanksgiving by Wende and Harry Devlin many times without even considering it. The cover did not appeal to me at all. Then I saw the book mentioned on Almost Unschoolers and decided to give it a chance. The interesting thing about all of this is that the book is all about not judging people by their appearance, or, you could say, not judging a book by it's cover. I also used the book as an opportunity to talk to my children about the fact that some strangers may look nice but not act nice and they should never go anywhere with a stranger no matter how nice they appear to be. I use every opportunity to get that message across to them.
There is also a recipe for cranberry bread at the end of the book, and when a fictional book has a recipe, I have to try it. There is an option to put raisins in the bread, but we made ours all cranberry. If I knew the kids would not like it (they took one bite and said, "yuck"), I probably would have added walnuts to the recipe. Actually, chocolate chips would be good in the bread too. This reminds me of my favorite ice cream made at a local creamery; they call it Cranberry Bog and it is cranberry ice cream with walnuts and chocolate chips. It is SO good! Anyway, my husband and I both enjoyed the cranberry bread!
I posed a few questions to the kiddos while we were waiting for the bread to bake:
- Do you think cranberries bounce?
- Do you think cranberries will float or sink?
- What do you think cranberries look like on the inside?
We had fun hypothesizing and then testing each hypothesis. Cranberries were rolling all over the kitchen.
Because we were bouncing cranberries, I had to pull out our copy of Clarence: The Cranberry Who Couldn't Bounce by Jim Coogan.
We actually met the author when he came to our local public library for a special story hour about two years ago. The book is a nice way to talk about perseverance.
After making the bread, I had a few cranberries left over and I could not resist making a batch of cranberry tinted pink play dough.
I used my favorite play dough recipe and followed the cranberry steeping directions from Almost Unschoolers. I just poured boiling water over a 1/4 cup of cranberries and let it sit for a while. Then I stuck it in the microwave for a minute or two to get the most color from the cranberries. I used the cranberry dyed water in this recipe:
1 c. flour
1/2 c. salt
1 T. cooking oil
1 T. cream of tartar
1 c. cranberry dyed water
1 t. extract (I used vanilla; see comment below)
1 t. glitter (optional)
food coloring (I did not need food coloring for this dough; the cranberries took care of that! R loved the pretty bubblegum pink color!)
I measured the ingredients into a nonstick pot and stirred until well mixed. Then I cooked it over medium heat until the dough pulled away from the sides and formed a ball. I dumped it out onto a cutting board and once it was cool enough to touch, I kneaded it until smooth.
I knew from Almost Unschoolers' experience that there would be no cranberry fragrance, so I added some vanilla extract just because I like the dough to smell good.
We might have to continue the cranberry fun because I saw that there is a Cranberry Christmas book by the same authors as the Cranberry Thanksgiving book! FYI: the cranberry is the state fruit of Massachusetts (our home state)!
10 comments:
We just did Cranberry Thanksgiving for FIAR last week and my girls just loved it. Looks like you had lots of fun!
Oh wow what a fun Cranberry Day!! Emily loves all things Cranberry we will have to borrow some of your ideas :0)
This book sounds like a great book! I love the cranberry bread looks yummy to me!
I added glitter to the play dough, yesterday - to fancy it up for the birthday party. It is very pretty that way.
I totally agree about the cover of the book - if I hadn't been looking for Cranberry books, I never would have just pulled that one off the shelf. It's so much better than it's cover. We already have Cranberry Christmas on hold :)
I remember someone telling me about another book in that series that's a Christmas one.
I'm thinking I need to pick up some fresh cranberries to fiddle with.
What a great book, I haven't seen that one yet. I like the activities you did also. Good thinking to add about stranger danger!
I didn't know cranberries were our state fruit!
And that cranberry-tinted play dough is very pretty.
What great ideas! Given the theme of the book, how ironic that it didn't appeal to you because of the cover.
The cranberry bread looks delicious -- how could they possibly resist it??? And I love the cranberry ice cream idea. Yum!
Thanks for the book recommendations. I've never heard of the Clarence book before. So cute!
This is part of the FIAR...we were going to do the book study and I ran out of time!
I think you should write a book! =-)
Looks like a great cranberry day. I don't think cranberry cake would be a hit with Anna either even though she likes dried cranberries. I also really liked your simple thinking questions that you used.
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