Little Masterchefs and Apple Pie
Today was another serious day in the “kitchen” preparing our Apple Pie. We had a short free play time on the mat and then we sat together in a small circle as there were not so many of us at Summer School today. Our teachers said that we paid attention so beautifully during circle time and our time together was really productive and fruitful. We counted the number of friends that were 
sitting in our circle and there were five in total. We had four teachers and Christine was in the office so there five adults and five children and all together that makes………….ten! While we were sitting together on the mat, Shelley asked us if we like apple; what colour we thought they were; where did they come from; what do we do with apples etc. Well some of us are still developing language so we cannot answer such complicated questions. We do know our colours though and we thought that apples could be green, red, yellow, green and red, red and yellow and maybe even green and yellow. Well right next to Shelley was a red and yellow apple and she proceeded to tell us a beautiful story that she used to have on tape; but she found the text on the computer and she printed it out. It is a story about a little red house with no windows and no doors but the most special thing about this house is that it has a star inside.
The story is about a little boy who doesn’t want to play with his toys any more so his mother suggests to him that he go for a walk 
outside and see if he can find a little red house with no windows and no doors and a star inside. So he walks down the road and asks a little girl if she knows about such a house. She laughs and tells him to go and ask her dad……………….The story goes on and just when the little boy decides to turn around and go home, a bright red apple falls from a tree right next to him. He picks the apple up and goes home.
When he arrives home, his mother is so happy to see him and she takes the apple and cuts it through the centre and………………there right in the middle was a a star. The boy was so happy to discover this and we too were amazed to see that when Shelley cut the apple through the centre…………BINGO………there was a star. We sang “Dingle, Dangle, Derry me, apples on the apple tree” and our good morning song, and then we went 
to wash our hands and prepare for our cooking. Today the ingredients were pastry, apples, cinnamon, sugar and some butter. We chopped the apples into cubes which are really small pieces. A dice is a cube in shape and so is a box. Then we cooked them in the microwave with some lovely aromatic cinnamon. When they were soft and had cooled down a little, we placed them in the centre of a rectangular piece of pastry. Our teachers helped us make the pastry into a triangle shape with the apple mixture right inside. We used a fork to make patterns on the edge of our triangle and then they went into the oven. We couldn’t wait to eat them and as soon as we smelt that beautiful baking smell, we sat down for snack time. We first ate our own snacks and then had our apple pies for snack number two. Oh they were sooooo delicious and some of us had two pieces of apple pie. We are feasting this week in our “Little Masterchef” class and having so much fun.
During the morning some of us did activities at the drawing table. We used different writing materials and tools; we could use the 
pairs of scissors with many different designs on them and Jennifer learnt how to use a stapler. She squeezed really hard and then saw the little silver shapes on her piece of paper.
We have an Italian cooking experience all waiting for us tomorrow. Bravo!
Wishing you a lovely afternoon in the sunshine and see you tomorrow for another fun day of cooking and of course, eating.
With love from Shelley, Kana, Rachel, Christine and Miyuki.