It's Apple Time!

Our autumn unit arrived in full force as we began an inquiry on apples.

We started by setting up our own little apple orchard 

and market store in our pretend lab. 

Spending and counting money, learning to wait in line, sharing materials... these are LIFE SKILLS in action!

The children are having so much fun 
picking apples off the apple tree and sorting 
them by colors into the bushel baskets.

 Making apple pies to sell in the store takes lots of team work.

Taking orders at the window takes concentration and the ability to use listening skills while writing at the same time.

We heard a story about a little boy who found a star in his apple and then we found stars in our apples.

We observed how the air browned the flesh of the apple.

It was very fun digging all those seeds out with our little fingers.

We did more apple science and made a prediction whether or not apples would float or sink.

The outcome... FLOAT!!

Some of our little scientists tried their first observational drawing of an apple. Drawing like a scientist is very different than creating like an artist. It takes great concentration. A scientist draws what is seen. 

We printed with apples.

We are learning to see a number in many different ways; number symbol, number of objects, tally marks, in a 5-frame or 10-frame.

The children enjoyed a variety of different apple math games and activities.

Comparing the weight of an apple to other fall nature items was fascinating to the children.

 

We picked up apples at the finger gym using a tweezers 
and hung them in the tree while also matching the 
apple color to the correct tree.

We learned about a new center called 'Write-the-Room' and 
played an 'I Spy' the letter apples around the room.

 We look so official!

 After all, we are letter detectives!

We matched ABC apples at the pocket chart center.

Wrote letters in the apple writing tray.

We also built our names from mini apples that 

we hunted for in our ABC sensory bin.

In our BIG sensory bin we prepared apple pies. Mmmm... the cinnamon smelled so yummy!

Pie, anyone?!?

We simply have centers everywhere in our rooms.
Give us a shelf or a door and we will turn it into space for a center. Here the children are playing at our retelling center and reciting our apple poem of the week.

Building apple trees at the playdough 
tinker tray helped us use our imaginations.

Can you stack 10 apples using playdough & caps?

Painting apple trees at the easel was a blast.

Another highlight from the week was our apple 

tasting party and graphing the results.

 RED was the winner in Miss Windsor's class and GREEN was the winner in Mrs. Flynn's class!

The children learned so much about the lifecycle of an apple and all about the parts of an apple, we decided to make a 'diagram' and label all the parts.

Stay-tuned for more apple fun showing what our engineers 

worked on in the construction zone:)