Simply Second Grade: Apple Week!

I can't believe that Apple Week is over! The school year is really flying!!! We had a great week learning about Johnny Appleseed and doing different activities involving apples! At the end of the week we made homemade applesauce and the kiddos brought apple snacks for our apple tasting party. YUM! Here are just a few photos of some of the things we did this week.

Of course we read several versions of Johnny Appleseed and discussed what we learned, as well as comparing the stories.

I introduced adjectives to my students by giving them each a piece of a granny smith apple. I told them to use their senses to describe it. The very last thing they could do was taste it. They talked with their neighbors and then they came up with words to describe the apple! (I used this prompt to help make sure they were coming up with adjectives: I have a _____ apple). I wrote their responses on our huge apple (below). Next, I gave them a piece of a gala apple. We repeated the process, and of course they came up with different adjectives since the two apples look and taste different :)

The next day, we reviewed adjectives and I had them use adjectives to describe different things in our classroom aloud. Then they made these cute adjective apples!

This week, we worked on addition story problems. I had my students write story problems with apple stickers!

I had each of my students bring an apple to school on Wednesday to be used for some graphing and measurement activities. (Then of course we would use them for our applesauce!) First we graphed the color of apples we brought. At the bottom I had some questions about the graph for my kiddos to answer.

The next day we worked on measurement (and estimation) using standard and nonstandard units. First, we practiced measuring things that had a straight edge. We found that was pretty easy! We wanted to measure our apples, but could we measure something round using a ruler? Not really! So we decided it'd be easier if we put yarn around our apples and then measured that! I had my students measure (to the nearest unit) their apples using unifix cubes, dominoes, pennies, inches and centimeters. They did awesome!

My kiddos also got to make apple transformations. I have decided that next year I will now show them an example of an apple transformation... I may do a different object so they get the jist of it. Because even when you tell them 45 times, "No copying Mrs. Lynes!" you get about 10 who still do :) But they are still adorable regardless!