Whales work together to accomplish BIG things!
/On Tuesday morning, Ms. Ellie showed up with 2 bushels of apples that needed to be chopped into smaller pieces for making apple cider. Not feeling a bit intimidated by such an onerous task, Whales rolled up their sleeves and went right to work. We managed to chop all the apples in less than one hour! As we prepared to go outside, Whales shared how it felt to accomplish such a big job. "It seemed like we couldn't, but then we all worked together and we did it!", "My hands hurt from all that chopping, but I just kept on cutting more apples. I knew we could do it!", "I saw the apples in the bucket, and then I saw all the apples we chopped together. Wow!"
After doing all that chopping, we lugged the heavy bucket of apples to the outdoor classroom. We began by crushing the apples into even smaller pieces by turing a big wheel on a machine that pulled the apples in and cut them into bits. The wheel was hard to turn, but we put our whole bodies into the task. Our Whale friends offered encouragement and smiles as we worked!
All those apple bits got poured into a pressing machine with a big handle on top. We worked in pairs to squeeze all the delicious juice from the apples. We cheered as the sweet liquid came pouring out. We made apple cider!
The rest of the week we continued our apple theme, looking closely at the inside of apples and noticing that the apples growing in our piazza have, in the words of one Whale, "become houses for some bugs!" We will continue to investigate this problem, seeking some solutions to help improve the health of our piazza apple trees.
After learning that there are 7,500 (truly!) apple varieties grown around the world, the Whales conducted a taste test of their own. We tasted four varieties: Honeycrisp, Sweet Tango, Golden Delicious and Granny Smith. After looking at the results of our survey, Whales found that most of them liked Honeycrisp the best!
Our work in togetherness continued throughout the week. The photos below capture just some of our big, important Whale Work!
