Apple Centers

     Today was such a fun day!  We had Apple Centers where we tasted, weighed, and measured our apples.  We also estimated how many seeds our apple had and then counted to see how many were actually inside our apple.  We also did apple prints.  You can tell be the pictures how much they loved our activities for the day!

We made applesauce on Tuesday for our tasting center today.   I thought I had taken more pictures of our cooking, but this is the only one I had!  I'm so upset!  This class LOVES to cook!

Here is the final product.  The applesauce was not a very big hit this year.  It's funny how some classes like it and others don't! :)

Tasting Center

They tasted apple juice, applesauce, apple pie, apple muffins, fresh apples, and apples dipped in caramel.

I caught them totally off guard! LOL!

They recorded on their sheet their favorite type of apple product.  We will graph them on Monday.

This is my favorite picture of the day!  The apple muffins were a huge hit!

They guessed to see how many blocks were as heavy as their apple.  Then they tested to see how close their estimation was.

After weighing the blocks, they tested other objects.

Here they are recording their answers in their books.

The other objects they weighed were a small car, a small book, a sock, scissors, and a box of crayons.

Apple Print Station

They could choose red, yellow, or green to make their apple prints.  I did have one page specified for the favorite color apple.  Then we had a large sheet where they could do as many apple prints as they wanted with whatever colors they wanted.

I completely forgot to take a picture of the completed project, but I will take one and post on Monday!

Measurement Center

First, they looked at their apple and guessed how much yarn it would take to go around their apple.

They taped it on their sheet to show their guess.

Then they measured to see if they guessed too short, too much, or just right.

They recorded their answers in their book.  Some of them guessed just right! :)

Apple Seed Estimation

Before we cut into the apples, they guessed how many seeds they thought their apple had.  They recorded their answer in the book.

They counted their seeds and recorded their answers.  I should have taken a picture of his apple because it was the cutest, smallest apple I have ever seen! :)  I love this picture because he just couldn't believe how many seeds came out of that tiny apple!

We had such a wonderful day, and I can't wait to continue our Apple and Fall theme next week!  I had four wonderful mom come in and help with the centers!  They were such a huge help, and I'm so thankful for them!  We finally had the entire class at school!  Aren't they just the cutest little munchkins?!

Home is Where the Heart is!

     We use the Scholastic literacy program at our school.  Our theme for the month is Home.  It works out really well because we incorporate it with All About Me and Our Family.  Some of these are suggested activities from the curriculum, some I have added, and some have been tweaked.  I posted many of the centers from the Scholastic curriculum already in an earlier post. (I probably should have labeled the earlier post, but I didn't think about it until now!)  I'm also including some of the other activities that we've been doing this week!

We finished up our creation book the first part of this week.  They glued tissue squares on to wax paper to look like a church stained glass window.

The last page, God rested.

I like to do the cover page last, so that it is fresh.  For the cover page, we used Bio Color Paints from Discount School Supply.  These are so cool!  The paints do not mix and gives your picture a layered textured look.  There are many different things you can do with these paints!  Try it, you'll like it!!!

It also dries faster than regular paint!  WooHoo!!!

Love how cool these turned out!

 

Number two page.

We read The Shape of Things in Writing Workshop and discussed how we can use shapes to help us draw.  We also discussed about the top, bottom, and middle of a page.

After reading and discussing, we drew pictures of our houses in our journals.  This was a journal activity from Scholastic.

This was one of our books from the Scholastic curriculum that we read.  As a group, we labeled the rooms of a house.  I was going to have them do this individually, but we ran out of time!  I also forgot to take a picture of our labeled house, and I already threw it out! :(

This was another activity taken from Kim Adsit's  Family Fun Pack.  I really liked this because it went over color words and I was able to introduce ordinal numbers and positional words.

This was one of our song/poems that is our Home theme.  The kids LOVE singing this!  Everyday they ask me when they come in, "Are we singing Ten in Bed?"!

I'm not really sure where I got this...maybe Lakeshore?  This is so cute!  We used this while we sang the song.  I will have it out next week with the book, so they can retell the story.

I found this at Making Learning Fun.  I wanted to do an activity that went along with the song and this was perfect!  They colored the envelope, cut out the little people, and now they are able to reenact the song.

I forgot to take a picture of the book, but we read the book The House That Jack Built.  During centers they made house mosaics.  This was the house they built!

I glued little houses in the middle and then sectioned off the surrounding construction paper.  They glued material on the house and various items (corn, rice, beans, seeds,etc.) on the divided sections.  Before gluing, they sorted all the items.

These turned out so good! The picture doesn't really do it justice.  It was a mess, but they LOVED this activity!

I love reading Mouse Paint!  We read the book and then experimented with color mixing.

We drew circles on the paper and then they mixed the colors.  They really did a great job!

The final color mixing product.

Pattern block numbers.  You can print these off here.

Math number stamp station.

Thanks for bearing with me!  I know this was a really long post!  Apple Day is tomorrow!  I can't wait!  I have had a few people ask to see the complete Creation book.  I will try to get that posted tomorrow or at least sometime this weekend.

Family Fun Part Two

   
     We are finishing up Our Family and Scholastic Home theme tomorrow.  Some of the activities that I'm posting were actually completed last week, but I just didn't get them up!  Some were started last week, but were finished today.  I have really enjoyed teaching this theme!  There is so much more that I wanted to do, but we are out of time!

Our letter was last week was the letter H.  We circled the letter  H in our poem, practiced writing the letter H, read a H book, listed H words, and made our hen page for our Alphabet Scrapbook.

Our Buccaneer of the Week last week.  She brought in Olivia to read as her favorite book.  I just happened to have an Olivia for her to hold while I read the story to the class. :)

She stays with another teacher after school, but likes to come visit and play in the classroom after school.  Pretty as a princess!

We read What Grandmas Can't Do and then listed all the things that Grandma can do.

This was another activity from the Family Fun Pack.  They painted white bags in an AB pattern.

We had to wait for the bags to dry, so that is why we finished up today.  They chose 5 items that they wanted to take to Grandma's.  They cut them out and put them in the bag.  We listed them as a class, and then we filled out their individual list.

This is actually a Mother's Day book, but I like to read it when we are discussing brothers and sisters.  The story is about a boy who has a little sister that he is jealous of.  He ends up taking care of her: reading her a story, taking her to the store, and giving her a bath and realizes she's not so bad after all.  His mother explains to him that he use to be little just like her and did the same things she is doing now.  It really is a cute, sweet story!

After reading the story, we did a Venn diagram of how many brothers and sisters we had.  I took this picture at the end of the day, that is why there are chairs in the picture.  We also did a brother/sister bar graph.  We learned there are several different ways we can graph.  I usually do this graph with the class, but I wanted to give credit to Kim Adsit because I did use her lettering.

I plan on showing all of our great home activities tomorrow!