Saturday, September 11, 2021

Apple Investigations and Craftivities for Your Classroom
  
Have you been thinking of what units you'll be teaching in the fall for science? You might want to consider teaching a thematic unit about apples! Under this umbrella unit, you can pull in TONS of skills: properties of apples, life cycle of apples, parts of an apple, the seasons of the apple tree, making 10 frames with apples, friends of ten with apples, apple BUMP games, graphing varieties of apples, making applesauce with procedural text,  Tall Tales with Johnny Appleseed, poetry with apples and expository writing about apples. 

See... it's endless about what skills and concepts you can pull together and make it fun and engaging for the students! And, the best part about this thematic unit... is the apple tasting! Having 
an apple investigation using your 5 senses is so fun! Have different stations set up so your students can investigate! Click here to check out this resource! 




 You can devote one day to bring in varieties of apples and have the students taste them, vote on their favorite one, graph them, and make applesauce with them!  Here is a recipe that you can try with your students in the crockpot!

Applesauce Recipe

After you make applesauce with your class, you can also have the students write about it using a procedural text!


Procedural Writing Templates
Click  here  to check out this resource! 

For this thematic unit, I've written 12 days of lesson plans with mentor texts, materials, directions, and examples. They are easy to follow and are user friendly.

Apple Lesson Plans

To help with the lesson plans, I've put together apple vocabulary cards to show the students. You can display these in your classroom on your anchor chart or pocket chart for an excellent resource for the students to use!
Apple Vocabulary Cards

  Johnny Appleseed is another fun story to read. Your students can write a biography about him with a craftivity! Click here 




For interactive notebooks, the students can illustrate using their 5 senses for each season, label the parts of the apple, illustrate the life cycle and many more...





For math, I've put together many different math games and templates. There is an apple BUMP game, making friends of 10, problem solving, and graphing. Click here to see the math mats! 





Click  here for BUMP games! 

There are two focus poems that I've included in this unit. The students can cut them out and glue them into their poetry notebook and illustrate a picture. Under the picture I always have them write a caption... "I drew, or I illustrated." This helps the students understand what captions are and how they work. 







Here are some cute craftivities that you can do with your class!
Seasons of the Apple Tree click here
 


Apple Investigation using Properties and Measurement
click here



Last, but not least, I want to share with you my apple theme center. This is where I put apple games, baskets of apples, books, posters, and hands on activities about apples for the students to use. The theme center is always a class favorite. My students get so excited when they come Monday morning and see a new theme center... they know they are learning something new!


Apple Theme Center

I hope you got some great ideas about how to incorporate apples into your curriculum for the fall! If you are interested in checking out my Apple Thematic Unit, click below.

Apples Are A "Peeling": A Thematic Unit

Love, Kara