Happy Johnny Appleseed Day!

On Thursday, September 26th we celebrated...

First, we learned all about the life of John Chapmann, aka Johnny Appleseed, with a digital read aloud.

Johnny Appleseed Read Aloud from Scholastic

Then we participated in Johnny Appleseed inspired learning centers with the help of some fabulous moms: Mrs. Mondaruli, Mrs. Edge, Mrs. Szekula, Mrs. Karamanol, and Mrs. Kratzel.  THANK YOU LADIES!  We couldn't have done it without you!!!

At our Science Center, we learned the names of the parts of an apple and labeled a diagram.  Then we taste tested 3 different kinds of apples (red, yellow, and green), describing them and choosing a favorite.  Finally we chopped apples with plastic knives to make our own crock pot apple sauce.  It was delicious!  Most kids even liked it better than the store bought version!!

 

At our Math Center, we practiced our math fact fluency with the game Apple Add Up.  In teams, we tried to fill our boards using 2-3 small apples at a time to cover up addends of 10.  Teams raced to see who could cover up the numbers to make 10 the fastest.  After playing a few times, we were able to decorate our own apple bookmarks. 

  

 At our Word Work Center, we practiced working with short vowels.  We matched onset blends with ending rimes that contained short vowels to see if we could make words.  After we played a few times, we tried to play the game like Memory (with the cards turned upside down).  It was pretty funny to see the silly combinations we flipped over!

 At our Big Book Center, we listened to a different version of a biography of Johnny Appleseed.  Afterwards, we worked together to sort and organize an out-of-order timeline of his life written on sentence strips.  In class we have been working on retelling our reading in sequence, so we were on the look out for sequence words like first, next, then, and last. A few especially savvy students noticed that the sentences were written in an ABAB pattern using a red and green pen!