This week’s activities have centered around American tall tale character Johnny Appleseed and his famous cross-country journey planting apple trees for early pioneers to enjoy. All areas of the curriculum have been focused on projects relating to Johnny Appleseed.
Literacy activities began by reading aloud Steven Kellog’s version of Johnny Appleseed. Students are becoming quite familiar with this author, as he has written numerous tall tales including stories previously shared about both Paul Bunyan and Pecos Bill. Non-fiction read alouds such as Gail Gibbon’s The Seasons of Arnold’s Apple Tree and Apples were also shared and discussed as we highlighted the changing of seasons, how apples grow, the parts of an apple, and the variety of apples. Students worked individual and in pairs to read about both apples and Johnny Appleseed. They identified ways in which Johnny was a friend to the Earth as well as ways they themselves could do to help the Earth.
Having a wide variety of apples allowed us to create pictographs, bar graphs, and tally charts of the different kinds of apples. After a taste test, we created graphs of our favorite type of apple as well. With each graph, students collected, recorded, interpreted and analyzed data.