Johnny Appleseed and Apples, Apples, Apples!

Johnny Appleseed and Apples are always fun to teach, because there are so many different things you can teach about. This year I focused on who Johnny Appleseed was, the life cycle of an apple tree, and the variety of goods we can make from apples.

We started by learning some history about Johnny Appleseed - watching videos, reading books, and of course making our own hats! lol The kids looked so cute in these I could barely stand to look at them. 

We also did a Directed Drawing of Johnny Appleseed. I love directed drawings, because the kids always think there is no way they can draw the picture, but then at the end they are so shocked and proud of themselves. And then made tear art apples to go with it. Coincidentally, our letter this week was also A so we made a poster together of words that start with A. The kids brainstorm words, we sound out the words to write them, and then highlight all of the As, and then count them to see how many we wrote.

One of my kids even came up with the word, Asthma! Impressive!

Then came the apple taste test! The kids tasted red, green, and yellow apples. Afterwards, they chose their favorite apple, wrote their name on that color paper apple, and then hung it in our apple tree. Yellow apples ended up being winning popular vote.

And then of course I had to show them the cool apple cutting trick which amazed them! It's always so fun to show them the apple cutting star when you cut an apple horizontally.

Then came our apple goodies taste test! I posted a sign up list for parent volunteers to bring some apple treats. We ended up getting: apple juice, applesauce, caramel apples, apple muffins, apple pie, apple crisp, sparkling cider, and baked apples. The only apple things we didn't receive was apple cider and dried apples! It certainly was some tasty fun.