Did you know that acorns are edible? They were commonly used by Native Americans and a great source of protein and fats. It just takes a few steps to make them healthy and delicious!
Step 1 - Gather the acorns.
We collected acorns from under our beautiful Live Oak in our yard that the kids call 'Magic Tree'.
Step 2: Soak in water and remove the floaters.
Step 3: Flash boil the acorns. This helps to easily remove the shells and skins.
Step 4: After cooling, crack open the acorns with hammers, rocks, or nutcrackers and remove the nut meat.
Step 5: Boil the shelled acorns to leach out the bitter tannins. We boiled ours for 30 minutes then removed the yellow water, added fresh water and brought to boil again. After 4 boiling sessions, we tried the acorns and they were no longer bitter!
Step 6: Mash the cooked acorns and spread out onto a cookie sheet to dry out in the sun or in an oven at 200 degrees until dry and crispy.
It's really fun to play Monster Mash while you are mashing :)
Step 7: Take the dried mash and grind it into a flour.
The kids love this grain mill - they took to it with gusto!
You can make bread, muffins, pancakes and more with your acorn flour. We made chocolate chip cookies!
PS - we like these Lily's Chocolate Chips, sugar free and the kids love them!
We learned all about acorns and oak trees this month!
Sorting different varieties of acorns with tongs and chopsticks...
... then making clay puzzles with the first letter of our names!
We loved reading these books to learn more about acorns and oak trees:
Acorn math!
Counting acorns!
Estimating acorns!
Sorting acorns by size and color!
Counting acorns by 2's!
Acorn games!
The kids were so surprised to learn that acorns sink and pumpkins float in this sink/float experiment.
Oak Leaf Rubbings!
With the leftover paper from our leaf rubbings we made recycled paper!
Decorated with Texas Red Oak leaves!
Mama Wendy made us a broom from Bur Oak leaves!
ABC walk! We are having such a lovely warm Fall. It's a great time to go out for a walk and an ABC walk helps keep the kids entertained and really noticing the world around them. On our walk through the garden we found...
Acorns!
Acorns!
Blossoms!
Collards!
...and all the way to Zombies!
ABC rocks!
Have you noticed all the beautiful butterflies on the passionflowers by the front gate?
We identified them as the Gulf Frittilary, explored with their caterpillars, and checked out some wings we found in the microscope!
See you next time!
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