A-P-P-L-E Spells Fun!!
This week was all about apples! I must admit, it is one of my favorite themes, I just wish I had more time to do it all. While we didn't get to do it all, we certainly did quite a bit! Here's a look at our week of Apple Fun!My sweet friend, Halle, from Across the Hall in 2nd, created a fun mini writing unit called My Favorite Way to Eat an Apple, and I used her materials to get the week started. First thing Monday morning, we brainstormed our favorite ways to eat an apple using this chart.
Then, I shared my favorite way to eat an apple with the students: apple spice donuts! Side note, it has been several years since I have been able to use food in my lessons (our district still allows food, as long as it is tied to learning) due to severe allergies/health issues. This year, however, I have no allergy/health issues, so I was thrilled at being able to share a small piece of donut with the kids!!
As the week progressed, the students turned their brainstorming into paragraphs and their writing is now on display in the classroom.
The rest of the activities we did came from my Apple Fun! unit, available on TpT. The students loved acting like scientists as they examined an apple (using magnifying glasses) and recorded their observations. They especially loved that they got to eat the apple at the end. Hehe.
Over the course of the week we added to this anchor chart. The kids did a great job of coming up with words for each category!
I read Apples by Gail Gibbons to the students and then we created an anchor chart together recalling facts from the text. The students then chose their three favorite facts and created their own flap fact book (I'm a huge fan of flap books...huge).
We read The Season's of Arnold's Apple Tree by Gail Gibbons and then made our own books about the seasons of an apple tree.
One of my favorite activities in the Apple Fun pack is the apple diagram craftivity, but my display space is super limited this year. So, I decided to shrink the templates down to about 70% and turned the diagram into a hat! They turned out great and the kids looked adorable wearing their diagram hats all afternoon (we glued them to a sentence strip).
We brought our week of apple fun to an end by making crock-pot applesauce. The kids were so excited about this all week long. I always bring in my Pampered Chef apple peeler and the kids go crazy over how this tool works (a big thank you to my own mother who gave me this super cool tool).
Our room smelled great all day long!
I had planned to do a shared writing of how to make applesauce (also included in my Apple Fun unit), but we had interim testing this morning and something had to give (insert sad face). We did, however, manage to compare and contrast apples and applesauce.
If our standards weren't so numerous, I would spend another week on apples (there are parts to my own unit that I just couldn't get to-boo hoo). I'm just glad that we were able to do what we did, and I always look forward to Apple Fun week (and, so do the kids!).
You can check out these activities, plus many more, in my Apple Fun! unit available on TPT.
Toodles!
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