Vermont: Facts & Fun

Vermont Fact Sheet

Vermont is a beautiful state! The leaves are very pretty in the fall and Vermont is famous for their covered bridges. My favorite thing about Vermont is the maple syrup! I really loved having pancakes with maple syrup for dinner! I was surprised this week when my great-grandmother mailed a sap spout to me from their trip to Vermont.

Facts about Vermont:

• Capital: Montpelier
• Nickname: The Green Mountain State
• Statehood: March 4, 1791 (4th)
• Motto: Freedom and Unity.
• Bird: Hermit Thrush
• Highest Point: Mt. Mansfield

Children’s Books by Vermont authors that we read:

• Pollyanna by Eleanor H. Porter. My family read this chapter book together. I love the story of Pollyanna. Pollyanna is an orphan who comes to live with her aunt and teaches the whole town to be glad and give thanks. We also watched the movie Pollyanna and I enjoyed it very much.
• M is for Maple Syrup by Cynthia Furlong Reynolds. This is a Vermont alphabet book that tells about the many things Vermont is known for including maple syrup, covered bridges, and dairy farms.
• Here Comes Darrell by Leda Schubert. This is the story of Darrell, a Vermont man who helps all of his neighbors in his small town and then the neighbors help him.
• Silent Night by Will Moses. This is the story of the people in a Vermont village getting ready for Christmas. The illustrations in this book are really beautiful.
• From Dawn till Dusk by Natalie Kinsey-Warnock. This is the story of a Vermont family and their experiences year-round on their farm.

Animals from Vermont that I learned about:

Common animals in Vermont include the honeybee, Morgan horse, monarch butterfly, trout, deer, squirrels, and many more.

Life Cycle of the Monarch

We especially studied the state insect, the Monarch Butterfly, this week. I love butterflies! Every year, my family visits the Butterfly Festival at Powell Gardens and we have visited several Butterfly Houses on vacations… my favorite is the Sophia M. Sachs Butterfly House in St. Louis. We read, Starting Life Butterfly by Claire Llewellyn & Simon Mendez and learned about the life cycle of the Monarch and Usborne Beginners’ Caterpillars & Butterflies. We also watched Illustra Media’s Metamorphosis: The Beauty and Design of Butterflies. I think it is amazing the way God made butterflies and how they grow and live.

Fun things I learned about Vermont:

• The Apple is Vermont’s state fruit. I go apple picking with my family every autumn.
• Vermont Teddy Bears are made in Vermont and we read the book How Teddy Bears are Made: a Visit to the Vermont Teddy Bear Factory by Ann Morris and The Legend of the Teddy Bear by Frank Murphy. I also took a virtual tour of the Vermont Teddy Bear factory online.  Then, I designed my own teddy bears for an art project.
• Calvin Coolidge, one of our presidents, is from Vermont.
• Vermont has 107 covered bridges.
• Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream is made in Vermont.

Vermont: State Fruit… the Apple

The state fruit for Vermont is the apple! This weekend, my family went apple picking and we picked 49lbs of apples. We then used the apples to make apple sauce, apple stuffed pork chops, apple crisp, and other yummy treats! This is the story of our apple picking adventure:

On Saturday, our family went to St. Joseph, Missouri to pick apples at Schweizer Orchards (5455 SE State Route Ff, St. Joseph, MO. 816.232.3999). It was very easy to pick apples! The trees are short so my sisters and I could even reach without a stool. We picked golden delicious and fuji apples. We also enjoyed playing on the playground that looks like a big wooden train.

The next day, we worked together as a family to make crockpot applesauce! My job was peeling the apples with our special apple peeling machine. Then, mom and dad put the apples in the crockpot with 1 c. water, 1 c. apple juice (can use water only), 1/2 c. sugar, lemon juice, and cinnamon and apple pie spice to taste.  We stirred the pot several times during the day and tasted the sauce to make sure it was delicious.  We froze some of the applesauce, we gave some of it away, and we enjoyed some this week!

I loved picking apples and I really enjoyed peeling the apples. It is great to help my family prepare food for all of us to eat.

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The Vermont Menu

Vermont is famous for its Maple Syrup! I was very excited for our Vermont dinner of pancakes with maple syrup, bacon, and eggs! I made the pancakes from scratch with mom. We followed our favorite recipe for buttermilk pancakes and they were delicious.

Tapping the Trees for Sap

I learned the steps for making maple syrup from reading about it and watching a video. The steps are:

1. In the winter, they drill a hole into a maple tree and put a spout into the tree. Sap (sap is kind of like blood for a tree) runs from the spout into a bucket if you do it the old-fashioned way, or the spout might hook up to a series of pipes at newer farms.
2. The full buckets of sap are poured into a tank. They boil sap carefully till the water evaporates and skim off any dirt and run it through a filter. Then you have syrup.
3. The syrup is then bottled and sold at stores.

To prepare for the dinner, we watched a video about how Maple Syrup is made and we read books about Maple Syrup:

• From Maple Trees to Maple Syrup by Kristin Thoennes Keller. This was my favorite book for kids. It explained the whole process and included pictures.
• Sugaring Season: Making Maple Syrup by Diane Burns. This book explains the step by step process for making maple syrup with great photos.
• Maple Sugar Festivals: Tapping for Sap by Lisa Gabbert. This book tells the history of maple syrup in the United States from the Native Americans tapping for sugar to modern maple sugar farms. I like the photos that helped show how they get syrup.
• Sugaring by Jessie Haas. This is the story of a family during “sugaring season.”  In the book, a girl named Nora works with her Grandpa to gather sap for syrup. Her grandma makes special maple sugaar that she loves and shares with her horses. I liked the illustrations.
• Maple Syrup Season by Ann Purmell. The pictures in this storybook are really fun. In this book the whole family, grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins work together during maple syrup season! At the end of the story their reward is sugar on snow, a candy they made with syrup and snow. The pictures are really great.
• Sugar on Snow by Nan Parson Rossiter. This is a story of a family during “sugar on snow” season in Vermont.
• Sugaring Time by Kathryn Lasky. This book uses photos to tell the whole story of sugaring.

  

  

  

  
  

  

  

  

  
  

  

  

  Tapping the Trees for Sap

  
  

My entire family loved the dinner and so did I! It was really fun to have breakfast for dinner. I love maple syrup, it is very delicious!!!!