We had such a blast last week finishing up our unit on apples! The kids were so excited Friday when they were able to tell people around the school all they learned!
We learned about how an apple grows.

We also made these cute apples from Jennifer at First Grade Blue Skies. They held our circle maps that had apple adjectives. {Hers are cuter with raffia, but I didn't have any! :( }

Thursday, we learned all about Johnny Appleseed by reading books and watching a little video that I rememeber watching as a child. We wrote facts about Johnny then made these cute Johnny Appleseeds using Cupcake's pattern. {Click here to grab it}.

The video...

Our whole group chart and individual Johnny Appleseeds...the graphic organizer is in my apple pack.

We also used apples all week to help us in math. We reviewed the number five and worked on decomposing, equality, and subtraction.

We used these with our Five Red Apples song to act out the song on a number line.

We used double sided apples to help us decompose the number 5

We used math sticks again this week with our song to decompose 5 a different way

As a quick check, we glued apples to make equal groups

We used apples (beans painted red) to act our song and introduce subtraction

Our recording page for the subtraction

You can get this math for free here, here, and here.

Friday was our big apple celebration and we had so much fun!
We did a little experiment to see if apples float or sink...

We also made applesauce, which is always a hit. We also had lots of other apple treats that the kids brought in. It was soooo yummy!

Mashing the apples - I used about 13 apples, brown sugar, water, and cinnamon. I like the brown sugar better than regular ;)

We had apple chips, apple oatmeal pies, apple dumplings, apple brownies, apple rings, applejacks cereal, applesauce, and apple juice!

To say that the kids had fun is an understatement. It was a blast!

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Vickie

Yay!! One of my most favorite weeks of the year is here - it's apple week!! I have no idea how or why I came to love this week so much, but I think it goes back to college where after one very long night of working on a holiday math project {and being the good students we were, we chose out of the ordinary holidays like Johnny Appleseed's birthday}, my two BFFs and I got on an elevator with a very cute guy who said something about how much apple stuff I had and all I could manage to mumble was something to the effect of "Yeah, I love apples." What a dork!! However, it did inspire my love of all things apple and Johnny Appleseed!
Here's what we've done so far this week...

We tasted a little piece of apple and thought of describing words to add to our big apple. The kids wrote these on their apple circle maps. I usually have the kids bring a pencil to the rug and give them their paper on a clipboard so that they can write the words as I write them on the chart. This keeps them engaged and saves time!

After we cut the apple, we learned about the parts of an apple. We labele our big apple diagram, then made our own. {You can see this original idea at What the Teacher Wants :) }

Today, we tasted red, yellow, and green apples. We compared and contrasted the apples on our apple organizer (love this idea I got back way back when from Little Giraffes!) Then, we graphed our favorites on a big class graph and then did individual graphs with our class data. {The graphing activity is in my Apples Aplenty pack}.

We also made these little torn paper apples that will hold our favorite apple writing that we'll do tomorrow {love getting fine motor in whenever I can!!}.

Whew! It has been a busy week already!! Are you learning about apples this week?

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Vickie

I'm a little late with this post...things got busy at the end of the week! We had so much fun finishing up our apple unit and celebrating Friday with our apple treats!

We used beads and a fuzzy sticks to help us decompose 5 again using our 5 Red Apples song...the kids loved it!

Our recording page (we do lots of hands on and modeling and we always do these activities whole group, so the kids are decomposing numbers as soon as possible instead of waiting until later in the year...it has really made a difference in their number sense!)

We went a different route Friday and worked on a little beginning subtraction with the song (crossing an apple out each time it fell from the tree)

You can get both of the math sheets and the small trees for the sticks here (for free!!). :)

We read The Apple Pie Tree and learned about what apple trees look like in different seasons...definitely a hard concept when it's fall and 90 degrees outside!

The beginnings of our applesauce on Friday

Mashing and mixing our applesauce

Yummy apple treats {applesauce, apple juice, apple pie}

I don't know if this video will work, but it's my kiddos singing Happy Birthday to Johnny Appleseed...they insisted we do it before we ate our apple treats. I seriously have the funniest, cutest class ever!

Also, in case you haven't seen it, Herding Kats in Kindergarten is having an awesome giveaway...hurry over to enter!

Happy Saturday everyone!

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Vickie

We had more fun today celebrating Johnny Appleseed's birthday and learning all about him. We read a non-fiction story and discussed how it was different from a fiction story, then listed three facts we learned about Johnny Appleseed. I had mine big on the Promethean board to help the students since we're not *quite* ready to do a writing activity like this on our own. You can find the graphic organizer in my apple pack on TpT.

We made these cute Johnny Appleseed faces to hold our organizers (thanks to A Cupcake for the Teacher!).
 

We also did more with our 5 Red Apples song during math. We used apples (beans spray painted red) and a tree to decompose 5 and write equations. The kids are getting so good at this and they loved getting out the white boards! I really like to use the white boards so that all the kids are engaged and not just sitting while others do something

In case you need the song, here it is (I have no idea where it came from originally - I have been using it since I started teaching 9 years ago!):
5 red apples hanging on a tree
The juiciest apples that you ever did see.
The wind came by and gave an angry frown
And 1 little apple came tumbling down!

My kids love singing the song, so tomorrow we're going to do another activity with it in math. Hope all of you are having a great apple week!

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Vickie

We had so much fun today continuing our apple unit! I'm so excited that the kids are loving it just as much as I am!

Today, we learned all about the parts of an apple, as well as what a diagram is and what we use labels for. We made a group diagram, then each student made their own and labeled it. These were pinterest inspired (of course), but I'm not actually sure where the original idea came from...if you know, please tell me :).

We also had our apple taste test today. We tasted a red apple, green apple, and yellow apple. After, we made a comparison chart of all the apples and then graphed our favorite (my kids this year seem to love anything sour!). We also used a sentence frame for help and wrote about which apple we liked the best.

Can I just say how happy I am to have a Promethean board again? Makes life {for me and the kids} so much easier, especially since today was the first time we've done a graph with a data page!

For this to be our first time doing a data page, I was really impressed with how well the kids did!

The graphing and writing activities are in my apple pack that you can grab here.

Tomorrow is Johnny Appleseed's birthday, so we've got lots of fun planned. We can't wait!

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Vickie