What the Teacher Wants!: Apple Take-Over!

I shared this post on our blog 4 years ago! Can you believe that? We have been doing this a long time! HA! I wanted to share it again because it's one of my favorite things to do in my classroom...

I'm pretty sure most kinder, 1st grade and 2nd grade classrooms are teaching about apples right now or in the near feature. I thought I'd share my ideas with ya...and my printables! :) I love doing this apple unit in 1st grade! Thanks to my team for all the great ideas!

First, I teach my kiddos about the parts of an apple and then label them in our science journal:

I made this apple out of construction paper.

Then we play the apple parts games! I give each of my students one of the following cards. Then, I read a clue for one of the parts of an apple. For instance, "this part of the apple protects the inside of the apple". The students with "skin" will hold up their card. Then, I give another clue and those students will hold up their card. :) It's a great vocabulary game that I got from my teammates.

I give this little test at the end of the week:

In the core, the students need to do ~~a bit~~ a lot of opinion writing. So, this is the week I teach fact and opinion. I do it with apples, of course and I use my pocket chart.

Then, we taste apples! I send home a note a few days earlier and students bring in one apple of their choice. I cut up all the apples and we taste each kind. They decide which one they like the best and write an opinion piece {for the beginning of the year, I only have them state their opinion and one supporting sentence}.

Our graphing math activity for apples is so YUMMY! I bring in apple sauce, juice, pie, and a plain apple. We taste a small bite of each of them and vote for our favorite. Then we record:

We also talk about Johnny Appleseed! My old teammate had the cutest Johnny Appleseed that we did {sorry, no printable for that!} and then we completed a little vocabulary sheet: