In the month of September, my favorite unit to teach is apples. September 26th is Johnny Appleseed's birthday. We spend a week doing all sorts of apple themed activities. From apple themed sensory bins to hand print apple trees. These seven activities can make learning about apples fun!
One of the first things I learned in college, was to make learning stick you, have to engage your students. To engage my kiddos this week, I have turned my classroom into an apple orchard. From bushels of apples, to picnic tables to apple trees. In a lesson on apples, it feels like you have been transported right onto the orchard!
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Back to School time means working on recognizing names. I love how Michelle from Apples and ABCs used the Apples Inflatable Tub Cooler and Red Apple Stress Balls to have her kids work on name recognition. She wrote all her student's names on a stress ball, and they have to pull an apple out, and match it to their names on a sentence strip.
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My students love to do craft projects. I found these precious Johnny Appleseed Magnet Craft Kit which was so easy for my kids to use. Our parents loved the end results. Then I also found the Johnny Appleseed sticker story. My students loved telling the story of Johnny Appleseed walking and planting apple seeds.
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My favorite story to read during Apple Week is "The Seasons of Arnold's Apple Tree". We use our hand print to make the different season Arnold's apple tree goes through.
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Our favorite part of apple week is, we eat apples five days in a row. On Monday we will sit down with a slice of red apple, green apple and yellow apple. Then using Apple Bulletin Board Cut Outs we graph which apple is our favorite. This year, I used address labels to cut down on time. Once the kiddos tried all three apples, I had them come up to me at the Yellow Pocket Chart, pick which apple was their favorite. Put the address label with their name on the corresponding Apple Bulletin Board Cut Outs, and then put them in the pocket chart. I used the Painted Palette Poppy Red Apple Cutouts and color labels to make the pocket chart into a graph.
One of my favorite activities to do with apple is the Evaporation Experiment. On Monday, I take a whole apple, a sliced apple and a peeled apple. Through the week we measure how much the apples change in weight. We tie in apples during our center time. These two math centers focus on counting and ten frames. You can buy both the centers and the science experiment over at TeachersPayTeachers HERE.
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I have found that one of my favorite classroom tools are mini erasers. When I saw these apple erasers, I just knew I had to have them! I made this fun 1-5 number cards. The students pick a card, read the number and fill the five frame with apple erasers! So fun! Did I mention that the number cards are free! You can find them in this free apple week activity pack here.
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