Apples, Apples, and MORE APPLES!!!!!!

I have been going crazy over apples for the last two weeks.  Normally, I only do an apple theme for one week, but my timing was off on Johnny Appleseed Day, so I stretched it out to two weeks.  AND, some dear friends made some incredible apple activities, that I had to use with my kids.  Whenever I do a theme in my class, I love to incorporate it across all subjects so it really sinks in with the little ones!

I started by reading different apple books that I have collected over the years.  Our first apple thing was to dissect and taste an apple.  I have an ELMO (a fancy projector that I can put an object under it and it shines up on the board), that I used to show me cutting open an apple, and we explored the inside together.  I made this little apple labeling craft for the kids to make...

Then we tasted a red and green apple, and graphed which color they liked the best!  We placed a slice of a red and green apple in a small cup, and passed them out to the students.  They ate the apples, then I gave them a blank apple printable.  They were to color it whatever apple color tasted the best to them!

Since I had already cut apples to show them the inside and to do our taste test, I busted out the paints during free time for the students to do an apple stamping project.  

I made a traceable sentence strip that said, "I see apples" for the students to race and glue onto their art project.  Our sight words for the week were "I, see" so this sentence was perfect for us!

I was able to conduce two science experiments using one of Hadar's apple units.  We tested to see if apples and seeds sunk or floated.  The kids were so excited about testing to see what would happen to the apples and seeds.  I did these experiments on two different days, and each time the kids were engaged and excited to test their hypothesis!

First, we graphed our predictions: would the apple sink or float?

Then I gathered the students around, filled a clear storage tub, and dropped our apple in!  We recorded our findings on a sheet that is included in the apple unit.  On a different day, we tested to see if the seeds would sink or float... We graphed our hypotheses!

I dropped the seeds in our clear tub...

And the students were SO EXCITED to see what happened to the seeds!

Here is a sample of the recording sheet that we filled out as a class to show what our findings were.

On Johnny Appleseed Day, we made A Cupcake for the Teacher's Johnny Appleseed Craft!  I had them write "I see apples" in the middle of the craft to practice our sight words for the week! :)

These little guys turned out SO CUTE, I am obsessed with them!  Today, we practiced matching upper and lower case letters using part of my Apple Unit.  I placed all of the upper case letters in the pocket chart, and the students matched the lower case letter beneath them.  

I hope you enjoyed some of our apple activities! I know the kids sure did! :)