Cranberry Play

I found this great idea for cranberry play here. I decided to give it a go. I've had the cranberries for around a week. I'm not feeling great today (first cold of the season) and I was worried about the cranberries going bad. I figured it would keep them busy for a while. I was right about that. They spent almost an hour playing with the cranberries.

I started out by asking Kaydence if she thought the cranberries would sink or float. She said, "I think they will float." I asked her why she thought that. She said, "because they are sort of little, but sort of big too." That made no sense to me, but whatever. So we got out some grapes, apples, and oranges out to test first. Then we talked about what makes the apples and oranges float.

I set the table up with a pyrex dishes, a muffin tin, measuring spoons, cups, a pie dish, and a bowl. I put some cranberries in each of their dishes. Then they filled their dishes up with water. (If you try this, put LOTS of towels down, or go outside) saw that they floated, and then went about playing. Nolan filled the muffin tins up and then scooped them all out. Kaydence was baking cranberry pies. We listened to music while they played.

Kaydence squished one of them and said, "Oh no! It's bleeding!" I told her it wasn't blood, just red cranberry juice.

Nolan wanted to cut them up. I got out some knives (not sharp...obviously) and cutting boards. The cranberries were too hard for him, so he went to the sink and brought back the grapes we were playing with earlier.

Kaydence did cut her cranberries open. We looked at the different sections and talked about how it helped the cranberry to float. Then she went back to playing.

Once they were both done I found a recipe for cranberry cake here. So we mixed it up and baked it. I had to use bread pans because my other pans were full of soapy water. I'm really not very good at baking. There are only a couple of things that I can bake with generally good results. Hopefully this turns out delicious. I can smell it and it's making me sooo hungry.  We also all learned that we do not like fresh cranberries. I don't like cranberry sauce either, but I do love dried cranberries. 

*I tried the cranberry cake and it's delicious. Neither of the kids will try it because they didn't like the fresh cranberries.