October 2018 – Star Kids by Naomi

As Johnny Appleseed’s birthday approached, we wrapped up the last two weeks of September with our All About Apples unit! I love this unit because it goes so well with our Five Senses unit in science.

During our reading block, we focused on a variety of nonfiction texts each day of the unit. Many of the books I read to the class came from Epic! (www.getepic.com) because they have such a great variety of nonfiction texts. I loved using the resources found in the Apple Activities packet created by Star Kids to pair with the books I was reading. The product includes resources for the apple life cycle, parts of an apple, apple taste test graphing, and much more!

For our Apple Taste Test, we used a Red Delicious Apple, a Golden Delicious Apple, and a Granny Smith Apple. Before starting the experiment, I read the name of each apple off the sticker. The kids loved that each one had a special name. The book, Apples by Gail Gibbons is a classic and the kids really enjoy learning about the different types of apples.

I passed the apples around the class, so that every student had a chance to look at the apples before I cut them. I had the students use their sense of sight, smell, touch, and even sound before tasting the apples. I really wanted them to notice every detail. After tasting each apple, I passed out blank apples for them to cast their votes. They had to color their apple based on which one they thought was their favorite. I called a few up at a time so that I could glue their apple in the appropriate section of our graph.

The next day, we began to make our apples for the apple tree in the hall.

For the second week of our unit, we used our knowledge of apple adjectives to create a tree map. This graphic organizer is great to use with descriptive words. We focused on the 5 senses and what we observed during the Apple Taste Test.

Based on the information we collected on the graphic organizer, we were able to do our Apple Core writing/craft found in the product listed on the top, which was created by Star Kids.