Play and Eat: Apple Themed Play Date

This post comes from our new official blogging partner, MaryAnn! She has been guest blogging with us over the past few months, and we (and you) have loved her so much, that we decided to just go ahead and make her an official part of the team. Welcome MaryAnn! You'll hear more about her soon...


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Well despite the fact that it is still very much shorts weather outside, it does appear that fall will be here soon.  My oldest started kindergarten yesterday (sniff sniff!), and stores are stocking their shelves with Halloween decorations.  Last year we enjoyed hosting an apple themed play date during the fall.  Let me tell you about it!

Apple Crisp

In my ideal world, the boys and I would have gone apple picking and made our crisp out of apples we had picked ourselves, but in the real world apples from the produce store are a lot cheaper than apples from the orchard, so that didn’t happen!  But, the kids did get to be pretty involved in the rest of the apple crisp making process.

First I got out my apple peeler/slicer.  This is a really cool contraption that I got as a wedding present.  I think it’s from Bed Bath and Beyond and it was not real expensive.  The boys took turns turning the crank and watching the machine peel and slice the apples.  They really liked the way the peel would come off in one long strand.  If you don’t have one of these handy machines of course you could peel and slice (large) the apples yourself.

Next I put gave the boys the sliced apples and a butter knife and asked them to cut the slices into smaller pieces.  They were so excited to be using a real knife!  It was pretty funny, but they felt very grown up.

After that I softened the butter for the crisp and divided it and the other crisp topping ingredients between three plastic bags (because that’s how many kids we had).  I sealed the bags and had the kids mush the ingredients around until they were combined.  Then we followed the directions to prepare and bake the apple crisp.

The kids were excited about the apple crisp and enjoyed eating “the fruits of their labor”.

Recipe (from Better Homes and Gardens)

5 cups sliced, peeled apples

3 Tbsp sugar

½ cup rolled oats

½ cup packed brown sugar

¼ cup all-purpose flour

¼ tsp cinnamon

¼ cup margarine or butter, softened

¼ cup chopped nuts (we left these out since my son has a nut allergy)

Heat oven to 375 degrees

Place fruit in a pie plate and stir in sugar.

Combine oats, brown sugar, flour, cinnamon, and margarine until it resembles coarse crumbs.

Sprinkle topping over apples

Bake 30-35 minutes or until fruit is tender and topping is browned.

Serves 6

Apple Tree Pictures

While we were waiting for the apple crisp to bake, we made finger print apple trees.  I cut out brown trunks and green squares of paper before the party.  The children glued the trunks onto a piece of paper, and then arranged the leaves above them.  To make the apples, I poured each child a small amount of red paint.  They dipped their finger in the red paint and went to town making apples.

The finished products were really cute and we enjoyed displaying them for the next few weeks.

Happy coming of Fall! 

We linked up with Tuesday Tots and 733 Blog, and notimeforflashcards.