| A is for Apple September 2002 |
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| This is our Attendance Pocket Chart. I found this idea on The Learning Leap. I printed each child's name on an apple. Each morning I scatter the apples on a table. The children find their name and place it in the pocket chart. The top sentence says, "I am at school today". The bottom sentence says, "Who is not at school today?" We count the number of children present each day and the number of children away. |
| We started our Apple Unit with a cute story called, "The red house with no windows, no doors and a star inside". Ms. Chang, our teacher candidate, read the story to the children. She then cut open an apple through the middle to reaveal the star of seeds. The children then used the apples to create apple prints. They placed the apples into the paint, then stamped the paper which was cut into the shape of an apple. |
| We created a number matching game with apple stickers. We traced 10 apples onto a sheet of bristol board. We then placed apple stickers onto each apple. We then cut out 10 apples out of yellow paper and printed the numbers 1-10 on the apples. The children have to match the numbered apple to the stickers. |
| This is our first number book of the year. We started by reading the story "Ten Red Apples" by Pat Hutchins. Ms. Chang then created a book called I see apples. We adapted this idea from The Learning Leap. There is an apple tree on each page with the sentence "I see ____ apples." The children printed the numbers 1-10 (1-5 for Junior Kindergarten). Then they dipped a finger into red ink and fingerprinted the correct number of apples onto each page. The above pagers would read, "I see 2 apples." and "I see 3 apples." |
| Each month we learn a poem for our poetry book. Our first poem is "Apples". We practice saying the poem, acting it out, pointing to each word, looking for words that begin with the letter a and finding the word "I". I typed out a copy of the poem for each child. They will circle all of the words that begin with the letter a., practice reading it to their friends and illustrate the poem by drawing an apple tree. Here are the words to the poem: Way up high in an apple tree, 2 little apples smiled at me. I shook that tree as hard as I could, Down came the apples, Mmmm, they were good. |
| Here is our apple graph. This is another idea form "The Learning Leap". First we had a taste test of three different types of apples: Granny Smith, Golden Delicious and Red Delicious. The children then decided which apple they liked the best. Each child choose an apple (red, green or yellow) and placed it on the graph. I the asked the questions, "Which apple was the favourite?", "Which was the least favourite?" and "How many people liked each type of apple?" This was a very fun way to intorduce graphing to the children. |