Five in a Row - How to Make an Apple Pie and See the World (PLUS Free Printables!)

We started using Five in a Row again with my 3rd and 5th grade sons. I know it's written for ages 5-8, but I absolutely think you can successfully use it with older kids. For the record, Silas is 10 and Titus is 8.

We are taking a break from the Mystery of History for a bit. The boys weren't retaining much and were bored while I was reading the lesson (it's not boring, but for young boys it can be lengthy). I had a wild hair to pull out our FIAR manual and try a few "rows" with the boys to see if that sparked the excitement about learning again - and it did!

We rowed "How to Make an Apple Pie and See the World" by Marjorie Priceman. This book is about a young girl who wants to make an apple pie, but the market is closed. She has to travel the world to collect the ingredients to make her pie. It's a humorous and fun book to read!

Monday:

We read the book and talked about it a little. Then I gave them some worksheets that I made which have the flag for each country she visited and space to draw what ingredients she found there. We looked up the flags on my phone and colored them correctly. The boys remembered exactly what she got from each country and drew and labeled the ingredients.

Next we dissected an apple. They loved this! I also made this worksheet for the boys to place their dissected apple pieces. Afterwards they ate their apples with peanut butter.

Finally we drew the apple's life cycle. I made this worksheet as well, and they drew the different stages of the apple's life. They did fabulous on this!

Tuesday:

Silas read the book to us this morning. Then we did a quick and fun "experiment" - Apple Volcanoes! I cut a hole in the top of an apple and we spooned baking soda into it. Then we took turns pouring vinegar into the hole and watching the foamy eruption! They loved this of course.

Also I promise Silas bathes daily and changes clothes. He has two of these red work shirts and if one of them is clean, he is wearing it!

Next we did our vocabulary sheet. I choose four words from the manual for them to write down, define, and illustrate. This week we chose: plantation, superb, coax, and ingredients.

We are also going to be doing a book summary sheet for each book we row. They fill in the book title, author, illustrator, a summary, main character, and their favorite part of the book. They then color in the stars to show how much they liked it! Silas colored in 4.5 stars while Titus colored in 10 (he added five more).

Finally we made apple prints! They each did two sheets because we used one for the craft on Wednesday. They had fun doing this, and Zeke just painted with his apple.

Wednesday:

This morning we read the story again and then looked at the sentences on the pages where she is baking the pie. I read each phrase aloud and the boys took turns finding the verb in each phrase. They then wrote the verb down on the worksheet. They drew a picture of one of the verb phrases.

Next we cut out our apple prints from Tuesday. They traced a circle onto cardstock to be the pie pan. They glued the apples on the pan. Then they cut strips from brown cardstock and wove them like a pie crust on top. This is going to be our book page for our binders.

We talked about how the girl evaporated the saltwater to get the salt for her pie. We pour salt water onto one plate and plain water onto the other. In a few days the water will be evaporated but the salt will be left on the blue plate! I did this experiment years ago with my older children. We will fill out an experiment worksheet once it's complete.

Thursday:

We read the book again. One of the major points of FIAR is to read the story five days in a row. We talked about some of the illustrations and adjectives used. We noticed the different types of transportation the girl used (some of it you have to study the illustrations to find) and drew and labeled them.

We read this book about Johnny Appleseed and made a notebooking page about him.

Friday:

Today we read the story for the fifth time. Then we talked about liquid and dry measuring cups. We did a few worksheets to solidify the concepts.

The boys did copywork from the book.

We made an apple pie!

If you would like to use the printable worksheets I created for this unit, please click HERE!

Next week - Lentil!