Hoor - Ay for Apples

What teacher doesn't love teaching about these:

SO FUN and So TEACHERY - right?  

We started our unit with a little apple math (all these ideas are free online, wish I could remember where I got each, but I've had them awhile, needless to say, none of these ideas are my own):

Apple Addition - students rolled the dice, used tiny paper apples on an apple placemat to count out what they rolled and added/recorded the two numbers together!  

Apple graphing - each student taste tested all three types of apples then picked their fave to graph, and we discussed the data in whole group.  One of my sweet momma helpers made this graph for me, isn't it pretty:)?

Then we did a little measuring with apples - again, found this online, sorry I don't have the source:(

One of our standards is ordering numbers to 20, so these apple puzzles came in handy!

For English Language Arts and Reading Workshop we read a lot of Johnny Appleseed books - here are some of my faves borrowed from our school library!  This also tied in to Social Studies because we discussed how Johnny Appleseed was a good citizen by planting seeds everywhere he went and by being sweet to animals!

And for science this tied in well to our solid, liquid, gas unit.  The apples were the solid.  When heat was present, they turned to liquid - applesauce, and the gas was the delicious steam we smelled all day while the apples were cooking:)!!!  There is a really cute free recipe download on pinterest for this applesauce - I printed it and handed it out to the kiddos in case they ever wanted to make it at home - again...they recorded what they learned in their science journals!

Solids, Liquids, and Gases, Oh My!

Man I have been HORRIBLE about updating here lately!  That's how it goes when school starts and things get off on a roll!!!  So, for the next few days I'll be backing up and getting the ol' blog here up to date!  Let me start with this...we studied Solids, Liquids, and Gases a few weeks back and had a blast learning all about matter.  We started by watching some Brainpop Jr. videos about it - gotta love Brainpop!  Then we brainstormed a few ideas:

We also had a day where we made pancakes to watch the liquid go to solid and then the gas in the pancake batter bubbles - sorry no pic of this - I was busy making 21 pancakes:)

We culminated our unit with a few special ingredients:

Ok...look sideways...the solid was the ice cream, the liquid was the coke, the gas was the foam/bubbles to make:

Ta-da!  Coke floats!  Oh my word - the kiddos LOVED this - you'd have thought we gave them each a million dollars - lots of hugs and thank you's this day - this is what makes learning fun folks - this is what it's all about!!!  After drinking their coke float they had to draw and record the different parts in their science journals!

I love teaching like this where learning is fun!!!