Time to dig into some corn studies! Or bite. Whichever.
BOOK OF THE DAY AND STEAM ACTIVITY
Otis by Loren Long
This book isn’t corn related at all, but it’s kinda farm related so that’s something, right? It’s a cute story about helping a friend and maybe even understanding value in familiar things while the shiny new toy might draw attention.
What Is Corn?
In our first week of preschool we studied apples. Lane has eaten his fair share of them in his short three years but never really studied the insides until we dissected one. It seemed to help his understanding of the fruit and the names of each part: core, seed, stem, skin, flesh. So we repeated this process with an ear of corn. We pulled the husk and silk from the cob, which is made up of kernels, and Lane might’ve taken a few bites from a raw cob. We also got some whole stalks to decorate the front porch and he saw up close how the ears grow from a tall stem. One of our favorite snacks is popcorn and he wasn’t aware that pop ‘corn’ was just that, corn. We tore into a bag of Orville Redenbacher’s and found small, hard kernels.
HANDS ON LEARNING AND WORKSHEET
Alphabet Flashcards and Corn Stalk Anatomy
We repeated a lesson on the alphabet today with a new set of Halloween themed alphabet flashcards that I designed, and our set of letter magnets. Can you spot our dogs? We love them so much that they made the cut for our spooky ABC drawings. The flashcards were laid out on a table and Lane matched up the letters one by one. He loves this simple lesson and it’s really helping him learn his ABC’s.
Since we studied the anatomy of an ear of corn today, it was fitting that our daily coloring page was themed around that. I drew this cute little representation of a corn stalk with boxes to label each part. I reviewed the names with Lane and wrote the words in each box using the color of the object. Then he used the correct colors to color each part of the stalk.
Click here for Corn Stalk Anatomy Coloring Page
CRAFT CORNER
Popping Corn
Originally we were going to use corn cobs as paint rollers but we got hungry and made popcorn instead! Maybe once the fall decor season is over we will use the cobs from our corn stalks to do our painting. I borrowed a popcorn maker from my parents, the kind that looks like a giant clear bubble and let’s you watch the kernels go pop. Lane had so much fun with this and we all enjoyed eating a big bowl of fresh popcorn. This popcorn maker is under $50 on Amazon and worked really well. It didn’t take long to make the popcorn, none of it burnt and it was easy to clean up.
Supplies Needed:
- Popcorn maker
- Popcorn kernels
- Oil
- Butter
- Salt
Start with a small amount of oil in the pan. We used vegetable oil but you can use anything with a high temperature smoke point.
Add your popcorn kernels. We didn’t measure ours but it was probably half a cup.
Top the popcorn maker with the lid and start her up.
Once the popping slows down, similar to the microwavable bags, then you know to turn it off and flip the whole thing upside down so the popcorn falls into the clear container.
Transfer to a bowl and season as desired. We used sea salt and a few tablespoons of melted butter and it was so good! Way better than popcorn from a bag so I think we will be purchasing one of these for our own.
Ember + Pine 