Going on a Berry Hunt!

We have had such a BLAST with this unit! Here is a quick recap since our last post on Tuesday!

Wednesday:
This was a light day because Gregg was coming home from a trip to Chicago ( in other words, the house had become a wreck in his absence lol) so we mostly read a lot of our books, watched Strawberry Shortcake, Dora's Berry Hunt and talked more about the different tastes - is this salty, sweet, sour or bitter?

Thursday:
This was an AWESOME day! We woke up and brought Daddy to work, so we got to start our morning with Strawberry Shortcake and her catchy songs during the car ride. They are really learning about manners from this episode, as well as being exposed to the different types of berries, so it is a very successful tag-along in my opinion! We went to the library after dropping Gregg off to get a bunch of videos to use in our upcoming units, including the DVD of Blueberries for Sal to watch again before going on our own blueberry hunt!

Then we decided it was time to make strawberry jam!!! I have never made this -- or any type of jam or anything close -- before, so this was going to be a first for all of us! The girls love cooking so they helped with all of the steps, which we followed exactly from the book. The only problem is that this recipe was actually part of The Berry Book by Gail Gibbons, not a true cookbook, so it was kinda just thrown in -- meaning it didn't give tons of details. So I grabbed a pan and followed along, and wondered why they didn't mention that it would take a couple hours to start to boil.... um, after two hours, and after I added the remaining sugar and looked at the final product, it dawned on me that maybe we used too big a pot!!! Ok, no problem, we had tons of strawberries and better yet -- tons of smaller pots! So we made two more batches, both of which only took about 10-15 total LOL! You can probably tell from the picture the one that is total sugar (after all that time, I am guessing the liquid evaporated? Is this still usable for anything? I didn't have the heart to throw it out since the girls were so happy with everything!) and the ones that were done a little better. A quick taste test before canning was a very delightful surprise -- I expected to make this and only use some of it for some tarts we are making Saturday morning, and throwing the rest away (we aren't jam eaters) BUT I think we may be holding on to this after all!!

After jam, we cleaned up, loaded into the car, picked up Daddy, and we were on our way to Moorehead Blueberry Farm for our own re-enactment of Blueberries for Sal!! ANOTHER FIRST for all of us!

I was worried driving in since the van read the temperature at 90 degrees and we were all in jeans, but it ended up being a very nice and we even caught an occasional breeze :-) The girls dived right in with their buckets and started picking berries like they had been doing this forever. They dropped them in "kaplink, kaplank, kaplunk."

There was a lot of laughter and Jordan kept saying, "This is AWESOME! " and "This is SO much FUN!" So, as you can imagine, I was in Mommy Heaven! Cali was her usual funny and spirited self. She enjoyed picking for awhile and then decided to start entertaining us. First she channeled Little Sal from the story and started eating the berries out of her pail, which I informed her was probably frowned upon since we have to pay for them! Then she decided to dump her pail out (there were only a few in there at that point anyway since she had added hers to Jordan's pail) and put the pail on her head! That girl is so super silly!
They really got into picking and didn't want to stop! I was so proud of them and I definitely think we will be making this a regular family tradition. We also enjoyed talking about all of the fun creations we can cook up with the fresh blueberries. . . I love that they love cooking, as that is something that Gregg really enjoys and something that I am learning to really enjoy as well. My wonderful mother-in-law gave me an awesome idea for a blueberry dump cake, which turned out amazing, and of course there are the blueberry pancakes and blueberry muffins option, but if you have any yummy recipes to share, I would love to get them!

While we were there, our girls made some friends. . . like they do EVERYWHERE they go! Jordan loved pointing out where the blueberries were and "helping" the little girl pick blueberries, although the girl was a year or two older and didn't really need any help lol. But they all had a blast showing each other their buckets and congratulating each other for doing such a great job :-)

Finally it was time to go. . . it was getting late and we still had to eat dinner. We ended up picking just over 3 pounds of blueberries! Not bad for a short excursion and our first time!

We picked up a yummy (and cheap) Wendy's dinner and had a car picnic while watching Blueberries for Sal and Strawberry Shortcake.

Friday and Saturday:
We have been having a fun and relaxing weekend. We went to the movies to see Kung Fu Panda and came home to watch the free movies we are taping off of the wonderful Directv Free Preview weekend for ALL of the Premium Channels. You know you are a homeschool dork when you get excited about all of the educational programming and supplemental movies coming on that we can use in the future lol!

Friday night we made a Blueberry Dump Cake and Saturday morning the girls and I made strawberry jam tarts! Yes, it has been a very successful and fun week!

Here are a few more pictures from our Berry Hunt:

And, I'm spent!