Slack Line

My daughter tried out the slack line for the first time yesterday. Growing up in Santa Monica...

Invented Spelling

This note says:

"Mom I did some Spanish without any (N E) help."☺️

The Agriculture Building

Another favorite childhood fair memory I have is of the agriculture hall. I love walking in from the Fresno heat, to the air-conditioned building, cool enough to keep fruits and vegetables looking their best for a week and a half. I love its high ceilings and the smell of over-ripe grapes and peaches.

Sun-Maid Raisins come from Central California, where I grew up. Their exhibit shows the century-old history of Sun-Maid, including the history of the Sun-Maid Raisin girl, which, yes, fair-goers can pose as.

There was also this castle-pumpkin, carved in 6 hours by expert pumpkin carver Russ Leno.

Inside the agriculture hall at the Fresno Fair

At the Mosquito Control exhibit.

 

We stayed a long time at the bees. I have a special bee post coming soon... :)

Ag-Ventureland

One of my favorite childhood memories is of going to the county fair with my dad. And one of my favorite parts of the fair was the livestock building. I was so excited to see all of the animals.

Now, I love that my daughter gets to make these memories with her grandpa.

The Big Fresno Fair's livestock building is no longer cows, sheep, and pigs. It also includes a hands-on section for children called Ag-Ventureland.

Ag-Ventureland had a corn-kernel box (instead of a sand box), magnet boards, lift-the-flap boards, farm blocks, and a trough filled with dirt and potatoes. Because what child doesn't like digging in the dirt? It's one of my daughter's most favorite things. Here she is pretending to be a potato farmer...

 

...and pushing her wheelbarrow full of fruits and vegetables.

 

She also participated in the Kids' Pedal Tractor Pull. To see what this is, click here. My dad and I had such a good time cheering on the little ones trying to pedal the 25-foot distance.

Apple Pie

Here is the apple pie we made with the apples we picked on our apple-picking trip Saturday.

I spent an hour peeling our tiny, beautiful apples.

I'm going to tell you the filling recipe we used, but I'm also going to tell you that I'll be using a different recipe the next time I make apple pie. My husband didn't care for the nutmeg, or the pie crust. And, even after making most of the pie herself, my daughter wasn't at all interested in eating it. So, here I am with almost an entire apple pie to myself.

Anyway... our filling recipe called for 3/4 cup of sugar,

 1 teaspoon of ground cinnamon,

 1/4 teaspoon salt

 1/8 teaspoon of nutmeg,

2 tablespoons of flour, 

and 1 tablespoon of lemon juice.

Here is my daughter making the crust...

 

The final steps before going in the oven...

Guess what I ate for dinner.

And salad.

Apple Picking

We spent the day apple-picking in Oak Glen, two hours east.

This is the general store where stood in line to pay for our bags and admission to the orchard. (My husband, who spent his childhood as a migrant farmworker, had no interest in joining us to pay someone to pick produce; this is an act one is paid for, not vice versa.) A small bag was $10, a large bag was $18, and admission to the orchards was $1 per person.

The employees of the farm wear costumes to give tourists the feeling of having stepped back into the 1800s. Latex gloves and a $22 price tag on a gallon of apple cider gives away the fact that one is indeed still in the 21st century.

We visited 3 farms: Riley's Farm, Riley's Apple Farm, and Willowbrook Farm. We were supposed to pick apples at Riley's Apple Farm, but we accidentally parked at Riley's Farm and paid for our bags before we'd realized our mistake. The farms are next to each other, and were originally the same business, so one can see how that might confuse a tourist, right?

Sheep at Riley's Farm

According to a bonnet-donning employee, the farmland was all purchased by Mr. Riley in the late 1800s from Joe Wilshire, for whom Wilshire Peak is named, for the tidy sum of two chickens, $50, and a jug of whiskey.

 These wildflowers line the main road on the walk from Riley's Farm to Riley's Apple Farm.

While my daughter played with her friends in this playhouse, I sat and ate a deluxe caramel apple for lunch. It was topped with ice cream, whipped cream, and chopped nuts, and lived up to its name.

For $3, one can learn to make a corn husk doll.

After Riley's Apple Farm closed at a surprising 2:46 p.m. (surprising because the website says it's open until 4 p.m.), we walked back to Riley's Farm to fill our already-paid-for bags.

The trees were really picked over. I finally found a tree with some apples on it in the "colonial arbor," and had to climb the parking lot fence to get high enough to reach the apples. I then climbed into the tree, facing off against a swarm of bees, and hoping not to get caught by farm employees. I hadn't even considered that I might have competition. A tourist with a fruit picker was reaching his pole up into the tree from the parking lot, aiming for the same fruit I was trying to get, and - with the fruit picker - was knocking loose apples, which were conking me on the head. I wanted to yell down, "This tree is mine! I saw it first!" but I thought that I should use my energy to make sure I didn't fall out of the tree or that bees didn't fly into my t-shirt.

The best part is that my picky eater actually liked the apples enough to eat three of them before we'd made it back to Santa Monica.

Drawing With Children

These are some of the finished still life drawings I did with my public school fourth graders.

Using Mona Brookes' Drawing With Children, I drew a still life on the white board, while my students copied my circles, dots, straight lines, curved lines, and angled lines. (This is the simplest version of this particular lesson. You can make it more complex by adding a container of kitchen utensils.)

Then, I showed them a color wheel and explained complementary colors. I told them to choose two complementary colors: one for the table and one for the wall. Some also chose complementary colors for their vase and teapot.

I was also impressed by way they textured their tables (I showed them 2 examples), and the way each child shaped his or her vase differently.