APPLES! Interactive notebooking

The next month of Kindergarten just happens to be my favorite part of the year!! {FALL!!!} Starting this week we will do 2 weeks of apples and then 2 weeks of pumpkins back to back. Lots of comparing, science, cooking, and just all around fall fun!

I've been working on an apple pack to incorporate into our apple learning. I'm pretty excited about all of the interactive notebook pages that I added to the unit- our notebooks just get bigger and bigger every year!

 To begin, we usually read an Expository book about apples. We are close reading Apples for Everyone this week. It ties in perfectly to all the basic topics about apples! I love for my students to make connections and pick out the facts that they find interesting. At this point in the year, we are just drawing and labeling what we can!

Then we talk about the seasons of an apple tree (tied in to the life cycle)

Then we go on to the life cycle....

 

We can't leave Math out! We have been working on decomposing to 5 and this fun little interactive page ties in perfectly!

 

Next week, after studying heating and cooling in science, we will cook and taste homemade applesauce! It always surprises me how many kids actually do NOT like it! {how dare them!!} ;) We tie this into our social studies standards this six weeks of sequencing.

If you'd like to purchase these interactive pages plus a TON of reading and math stations, click on over to check out the packet! 

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Build an Apple: Behavior Management

Hi friends!!
We are going start an apple unit next week and so I'm pre-prepping all the fun stuff I have planned. When we do themes, I really like to stretch it across the entire curriculum. We will be doing everything apples...except maybe Social Studies! ha!

Last year, my blogging buddy Hadar from Miss Kindergarten came up with the cutest way to track table points! I don't usually start table point right off the bat, but it will be the 4th week of school when we begin apples so I figure it's a great time to really focus on team work!

All you will need to do this is some scraps of felt. I happened to have plenty in my craft closet but I ended up using 2 red sheets, about a quarter of white, black, and green each.

 

I just eyeballed all the shapes when I was cutting. I have 4 tables, so I cut an apple, a leaf, 2 eye balls, 2 black parts of the eye, and a smile for each table. I ended up with these little cutie patooties!

 

I plan on hanging these up on my white board just like Hadar did and when I see my students working well together, completing directions quickly and quietly, being kind to each other, etc. they will get to add a piece onto their apple! When each table's apple is complete, they will get to choose a coupon out of the prize bucket!

I have used something similar to this in the past (using a rainbow) for a child that needed a little extra motivation to complete work in a timely manner. You could use this in many ways for individuals OR groups! I love the visual that it provides and gives each child a chance to work together and earn a reward!

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More apples!

Hi guys!

We have been having a lot of apple fun in my classroom this week and last!  Last week we tasted apples and wrote about our experiences. This week we've been learning about changes in matter from heating and cooling. We melted crayons with a hair dryer and then we cooked applesauce! YUM! It was more like baked apple sauce with the amount of brown sugar and cinnamon I put in!

We've been talking about our 5 senses the past few weeks and incorporated a lot of the senses into our taste-testing! I used these flap books from Alisha's awesome apple packet! My kids had to browse through magazines and find pictures for each one of these senses. We put these in our interactive notebooks. Love!

 We are still working on the seasonal changes in apple trees- one season at a time! {you know how slowly everything goes this time of the year in kinder!} These fabulous wheels are also from Alisha's packet. Thanks girl!!

 And lastly- I couldn't leave math out! I was blog-hopping the other day and came across this fabulous decomposing activity from Deeanna at the Golden Gang Kindergarten! We've been busting our hineys on decomposing the past few weeks and PTL my littles are getting it!! We watched  this video from Harry Kindergarten and said the poem all together. As each apple fell off we moved a bead over on the pipe cleaner and I paused the song. We talked about the parts- "there are 3 apples on the ground and 2 apples on the tree." {like I said- I am so proud of them!}

After going through the poem twice, we worked on writing and reading the parts whole group. 

Grab this page HERE.

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Apple bottom jeans

I can't talk about apples without that song popping into my head!

with the boots with the fur... 

We've been studying apples and everything-that-you-can-do-with apples the past week in my class. It's been a blast! 

In Science we've been learning about properties and taking a lot of observations- just like scientists do. I brought in real-life apples to the classroom and we observed while thinking about our five senses. Tomorrow we're going to sort the cards into properties (color, texture, mass, etc.) and lead into heating and cooling with some cooking on Friday!

In ELAR this morning we taste- tested yellow, green, and red apples and made sentences using our sight words. We read Amelia Bedelia's First Apple Pie last week and a lot of my kids have developed a love for Granny Smith!

 

I couldn't just leave Math out of the fun.. we've reallllllly been working hard on decomposing 1-5 and we are FINALLY getting it!!! **and the crowd goes wild!** 

{you can snag up this freebie number order sheet here}

 And my kids went nuts-o over this game today! They spin the spinner, count the apples and place that many linking cubes on the five frame. Nothing like simple, right?!

 click HERE to snag up this freebie game!

I should be back with some more apple fun at the end of this week! Hope you have a fabulous Wednesday!

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