Mrs. Banister's Blog: Peek at My Week {All About Apples!}

Apple week is finally here! This is the first week in the school year where we really dive into a topic and investigate it full-force, and integrate it into everything that we do.

I love fall and everything about it, so naturally, apple week is one of my FAVORITES, only behind pumpkins and our three Christmas (The Gingerbread Man, Polar Express, and Rockin' Around the Christmas tree) themes. :)

I'm linking up with Deedee to share the fun we have planned for the week ahead.

We will begin the week by investigating what we already know about apples. Enter my anchor chart for that...

I love using this format as the introduction anchor chart for our units. It's a little different than a KWL chart, and it lends itself to PBL. Having kids reflect on their schema leads to deeper learning!

Throughout the week, we will make graphs, crafts, and anchor charts all about apples. Here are some of the resources I will be using:

This pack is full of FUN stuff! My favorite is the apple glyph in this pack. We will be doing this and displaying it for all the world to see!

We have been practicing initial sounds like it's our job, and it's showing. The kids are getting GREAT at pulling the sound off of the beginning of words. I will use this game in small groups this week.

People, if there is an apple themed resource you want to use for literacy stations, look no further. The activities are no only useful for beginning of the year kindergarten, but they are also adorable. We will be using quite a few of these stations, as well as an adorable apple craft included in this product. We will display this on our bulletin board! It also includes an adorable poem, which will be the first poem we include in our poetry notebooks.

The week wouldn't be complete if we didn't talk about Johnny Appleseed! We will use lots of books and videos on Learn360 to learn about the original horticulturist. The kids will make the Johnny Appleseed craft shown above, as well as Johnny Appleseed hats for our celebration on Friday!

In addition to all of the great apple products I have accumulated over the years, I created some apple fun of my own using QR codes. This product is available in my little shop for just $1. It covers three concepts: Sight words, letter/sound recognition, and counting 1-10.

We will end our celebration Friday with a little APPLE CELEBRATION! We have ALWAYS done an apple tasting party/center day on the last day of apple week. This year, we will be using Cara's Apple Investigation journal as our activity. It's full of great apple science and critical thinking. We have lots of parents coming in for the celebration, so it will be simple to divide and manage what the kids are doing.

In addition to these fun, exploratory stations, we will be doing a lot of apple eating! Each child is invited to bring in one apple snack to share with his or her classmates. Since my own kiddo is in kindergarten this year, we (I) got to pick something yummy to send in...