This is a collection of ideas from the early childhood mailring from Teachers.Net.

Last year I had my class bring in a plain white Tshirt. We used apples cut in half and with fabric paint(red, green and yellow) printed the apples all over the front of the shirt. I did cover one spot on the front with construction paper helded down with masking tape. When the shirts were dry the blank spot was used to print with permanent fabric marker "I'm A Good Apple!" These turned out really cute and my kids enjoyed wearing them all year. I was lucky enough to have a very creative parent that did all the printing on the shirts (22 of them) She made the o's in 'good' look like little apples. I saw this idea in a MAILBOX publication. One of my very favorite resources along with this group!! :) Chris/preK/PA

Here is an Apple experiment. Make an small book for observation and prediction. Day 1- Have 2 apples of approximately same size. Peel one apple and leave the other alone. (I explain control group in experimenting. Don’t tell them that nothing happens to it!!!!!! See what the children think.) After a week or two- Do the final report. Apple Experiment We peeled one apple and left the other one alone. (Children draw apples.) Peeled apple Apple left alone Prediction: How do you think the apples will look after a couple of weeks? (Children draw the pictures and dictate.) Peeled apple Apple left alone Apple Experiment Final Report These are how the apples looked on ______________. (Children draw the picture and dictate.) Peeled apple Apple left alone

Art: Family Apple Trees: Cut a sponge to look like a tree trunk. Cut apple shapes out of sponge. On white paper, place the tree trunk sponge (dipped in brown paint) on paper. Use fingers to press on leaves with green paint. Sponge red apples onto the paper for family members. After it dries, family member names may be printed near apples with fine tip black marker. These are gorgeous especially when packed with colored paper. (I use dark blue.)

Apple Halves with Seeds: Cut 2 apple shapes out of oaktag. Make one about 1/4’ smaller all around. Children trace and cut larger apple out of red paper. The smaller is traced and cut out of white. Paste white apple onto red apple. Precut black seeds are available for the children to paste onto the apple. Note: I do this after estimating seeds in apples and observing where the seeds are located. This was it is an assessment tool as well as art! Sheryl/k/MA

We also make a book about an apple tree over the 4 seasons. I have a "naked" tree, and they have to put leaves, apples, background, etc. for each season. They put the blossoms on during spring, etc. We do graphing by seeds, color of apple, which one tastes best (red, yellow, green), and then we taste apple butter, apple juice, applesauce (that we've made!), and apple jelly. We graph our favorite. We make trees with apples cut in half and dipped in red paint. We visit an apple orchard the end of Sept. I know there's more, but that's all I can think of off the top of my head! Steph

Last year I read the book, Ten Apples Up on Top. We then made a class book called We Have Apples Up on Top. For each page I had the sentence strip for the child to fill in the blanks _________ had _____ apples up on top. Above this I had enlarged and xeroxed their picture ( I always take them in the beginning of the year). The children got to pick an apple with a # on it. After they told me what # it was they picked that many apples (precut apple shapes) out of a basket. They finished the sentence, glued their apples on top of their heads and we had a class book. It was a favorite in our classroom. I believe the ideas was in Mailbox at one time. Chris/preK/PA

We always make applesauce and make a class book about the experience. Almost every year the book turns out like this:

• We washed our hands. (Kids trace and cut their hand prints our of bright paper)
• We washed the apples. (I cut a faucet shape out of gray paper and a few water drops out of blue and the kids cut red, yellow or green circles, free-hand, to put under the water)
• We cut the apples. (KIds cut large red, yellow or green chunks of paper)
• We cooked the apples. (I cut a gray pan on a hot plate and the kids cut apple colored paper that sort of is coming out the top)
• We ground the apples. (I put the cooked apples into a food to take away the peelings so I cut a food mill out of gray paper and the kids make really fine apple colored chunks)
• We added cinnamon and sugar. (Cinnamon is brown paper cut with a hole punch and sugar is clear glitter)
• We ate the applesauce. Yum! (Kids draw pictures of themselves eating the applesauce) I usually work with several groups on this so a kid gets to work on two or three pages. I also have an apple poem that I just can't remember. Starts out... 5 red apples in a basket by the door. ____took one and then there were 4....etc

Letter Charts

1. I do letter charts for the letters: Aa for apple, Jj for Johnny, and Rr for red.
2. I have an grab bag with apples in it with all the letters printed on the apples.
3. I assess lowercase letters by having the children trace a big apple. I then print the lower case letters on the apple. A sticker goes on each letter the child knows until he/she knows them all.

Picture and Words

I use pictures of apples, apple trees, Johnny Appleseed, etc

The months of September and October are a wonderful time to study Johnny Appleseed and apples. September 26, 1774, was Johnny Appleseed's birthday and October is National Apple Month.

Johnny Appleseed, soldier of peace, early American patriot, our country's foremost nurseryman -- was born John Chapman whre his father's cabin sent up its smoke by the Connecticut River in Massachusetts.

Early in the 19th Century he came to the western Pennsylvania where, for a time, he lived on a little farm near Mars in the Pittsburgh area. There he came to believe that his mission in life was to plant apple trees -- Pippins, Golden Russets, Rambos, etc. -- for which he carefully gathered from the presses as cider making time. He dried them, filled as many sacks as he could carry and set out to plant them on little plots of open ground -- all the way from Big Broken Straw Creek in the wilderness of what is now Warren County, Pa. through Ohio on into northwestern Indiana -- a distance of 400 miles as the crow flies. In 40 years he walked (most of the time barefoot) 10000 miles living on herbs, wild fruit, berries, nuts, cornmeal mush, which it is reported he cooked in the tin pot he wore for a hat.

During the nearly half century he traipsed along on his mission of love, from one isolated cabin to another, he was unharmed by the wild creatures he loved and the Indians who regarded him as a Good Spirit, for he carried neither hunting knife nor gun.

Johnny Appleseed, who embraced Swedenborgian religious views, drank no whiskey. He believed that all evils are to be shunned because they are of the devil.

Johnny was always a welcome visitor along the frontier. He not only planted his seeds and cared for the young trees and herbs (catnip, pennyroyal and ginseng) but he read to the settlers from his well-worn Bible and carried to them news from their relatives and friends who lived miles away.

The story of Johnny Appleseed -- who went about doing good -- lives on.

Most recently, a 5-cent United States postage stamp has been issued to honor the memory of the little man who had a great vision of the frontier -- from Tennessee to the Great Lakes -- from the Alleghenies to the Rockies -- as a land of apple orchards.

Some years ago school children in Ashland County, Ohio, gave five cents each and took colored stones, many from historic spots, to the Johnny Appleseed Park where their contributions helped build a memorial.

At the Century of Progress Exposition in Chicago (1933-34) the Ohio pavilion conatined a beautiful wooden settee, the entire back carved in scenes depicting the life and deeds of kindly little Johnny Appleseed.

Poems and songs have been sung in his memory, and an old apple tree -- reportedly one of his -- yet grows and bears fruit on a slope among hillside orchard trees planted by A. E. Ball on a farm located two miles northwest of Fredonia, Pennsylvania.

(One may also see close by the quiet burial ground of Indians, pioneers, soldiers from the Revolution to World War II and many fanous trees from other states.

As for Johnny Appleseed he travlled on, up and down the frontier singing, "The Lord is good to me...And so I thank the Lord for giving me...The sun and the rain and the apple tree," but at 70 years he knew he was nearing the end of his journey. At the home of his friend, William Watt of Fort Wayne, Indiana, tired and weary, he asked to have his bed under an apple tree where he lay down to sleep -- his life mission accomplished.

By now you'll agree that Johnny Appleseed was one of our great pioneers, the one who sang, "And some day there'll be apples there, for everyone in the world to share...The Lord is good to me."

Found an apple, found an apple,
Found an apple on a tree.
I was napping, just catnapping,
Underneath the apple tree.
Then it hit me, then it hit me,
As the apple fell on me.
I discovered, yes discovered,
Newton's law of gravity.

I love red apples. I love red apples.
And I could eat them every day.
I love the sweet ones and I love the tart ones.
Apples keep the doctor away.

I love green apples. I love green apples.
And I could eat them everyday.
I love them crunchy, I love them munchy,
But I hate those apple belly-aches.

I love all apples. I love all apples.
And I could eat them everyday.
I love the sweet ones and I love the tart ones.
Please don't take my apples away.

Apple, apple on the tree
I know you are good for me.
You are fun to munch and crunch
For a snack or in my lunch.
Apple, apple on the tree,
I know you are good for me.

I know a fruit that's good for you and
apple is its name-o.

A-P-P-L-E

Five little apples lying on the floor,
I'll roll one away, and that leaves four.
(Make rolling movement with arms.)

Four little apples hanging on a tree,
I'll pick one off, and that leaves three.
(Pick an imaginary apple.)

Three little apples, I know what to do!
I'll put one in my pocket, and that leaves two.
(Pretend to put an apple in pocket.)

Two little apples sitting in the sun.
I'll pick one up, and that leaves one.
(Pretend to pick apple up off the floor.)

One little apple waiting in my lunch.
I'll eat it up with a crunch, crunch, crunch.
(Pretend to take a big bite.)

Up in the apple tree,
High off the ground,
(Look up and point.)
I see an apple
So big and round.
(Shape circle with hands.)

I climb up the tree
And hold on tight.
(Pretend to climb.)
I pick that apple,
And take a big bite!
(Pick apple and bite.)

Away up high in an apple tree
(Point up)
Two red apples smile at me.
(Form 2 circles with fingers)
I shook that tree as hard as I could
(Pretend to shake tree)
Down came those apples
And m-m-m were they good!
(Rub tummy)

Create a bulletin board while studying Johnny Appleseed. Using green and brown butcher paper, make a tree to place in the center of the bulletin board. Make copies of the pattern below using red, green, and yellow paper. Copies may also be made on white paper and students can lightly color in the apple. Allow students to write a few things that they learned about apples or Johnny Appleseed. Place the apples on the tree.

A variation on this bulletin board: "An Apple a Day..."
Use the same apples, but place one apple on the tree each day. Select a new fact about apples orJohnny Appleseed to emphasize each day while studying Johnny Appleseed.

This idea was adapted from Literature Notes for Johnny Appleseed by Cynthia Nagel, Frank Schaffer Publications, Inc., California, 1994.

Use this bulletin board idea at the start of school. While studying Johnny Appleseed, teachers may "introduce" their students by creating a bulletin board with their photographs. Create a tree with green and brown butcher paper and place in the center of a bulletin board. Using a camera, take individual pictures of students. With apple frames similar to the example below, frame each student's photograph and place on the tree. Teachers may wish to write the student's name on the apple frame to identify each class member. Cut letters to place on the board for a title: "The Apples of My Eye."

Johnny's Journey

As a young man, Johnny Appleseed left Massachusetts and headed west. He spent time in several different states during his journeys. Introduce students to United States geography by creating a bulletin board with a large US map on it. As students read and learn about Johnny Appleseed's travels, allow them to highlight the significant states on the board. It might be helpful to include on the bulletin board a chart with information about the events that took place in each state.

For forty-nine years, John Chapman ("Johnny Appleseed") roamed the American wilderness, devotedly planting apple trees. He created apple orchards in the wildernesses of Pennsylvania, Ohio, Kentucky, Illinois and Indiana, spanning an estimated area of 100,000 square miles. Some of these trees are still bearing fruit after 150 years.

The reason for John's mission is unknown, although it's said he dreamed of a land covered with blossoming apple trees; of a land where no one went hungry because apples were plentiful.

John's gentleness and courage were legendary even in his own time. He walked alone in the wilderness, without gun or knife. He chopped down no trees, and killed no animals. He was respected and appreciated by the native American tribes and the new settlers alike.

John lived very simply. He slept outdoors, walked barefoot and ate berries and the like. He made his clothes from sacks and wore a tin pot for a hat (and to cook with). Reportedly, John made his drinking water in winter by melting snow with his feet. Even the people of his time were amazed at his endurance.

Yet after his death, it was discovered that John was not poor at all. He owned (and leased) considerable areas of land -- on which he planted apple trees, of course.

John converted to Swedenborgian religious views, and from then on, mailed regular reports of his activities to astonished church authorities in Sweden. This is strange in itself, since Swedenborgians were exceedingly rare in America (roughly 400 in the whole continent).

John died of pneumonia at the age of 70, in the home of his friend William Worth, near Fort Wayne, Indiana. He lies buried there under the epitaph "He lived for others."

The longevity of trees and their ability to spread makes John Chapman's contribution perhaps the most lasting in American history. Laws, wars and political parties have come and gone; lawyers, soldiers and statesmen have grown powerful, only to see their life's work eventually undone. But John's apple trees have endured and multiplied, changing the face and food of a continent. All from a gentle man, possessed by a strange and wonderful dream.

Arbor Day is coming soon. Consider planting an apple tree in John's memory.

Both the seeds of apples and the trees themselves were brought to America from England, probably in 1629. John Endicott, one of the early governors of Massachusetts Bay Colony, is said to have brough the first trees to America. The cultivated varieties of apples gradually spread westward from the Atlantic coast. Native Americans took seeds of these apples into the wilderness and planted them in their villages. A white man, John Chapman, also helped to spread apple growing in the U.S. He carried apple seeds with him wherever he went, and planted them in thinly settled parts of the country. For this reason he became known as "Johnny Appleseed."

As time passed, American applegrowers developed many new and improved varieties of apples. Today the U.S. is the principal apple-producing country in the world.

Have ten children, each with an apple in hand, line up next to a table and sing the following song slowly to the tune of "Ten Little Indians". When a number is spoken, have each child place an apple on the table until a line of ten apples is formed. After the song, have the children join you in counting the number of apples on the table.

Ten Tasty Apples

One tasty, two tasty, three tasty apples;
Four tasty, five tasty, six tasty apples;
Seven tasty, eight tasty, nine tasty apples;
Ten tasty apples all in a row.

Apples

Poems and Songs

Last year there was a project for apple tasting by Alice Simpson. She had selected 4 apple varieties, had the participating classes taste them and vote on their favorites, then send her the results. She then posted the class/school and told its favorite. The receiving classes could make graphs, or whatever.

Sit in a circle. Cut off slices and have the children taste them. Then voted by putting names in a graph set up for the varieties.

Have several apple products available such as apple cider, apple juice, apple sauce, etc.. Have students sample a little of each and draw their favorites on apple cut outs. Take the apples and create a graph of the favorites.

Show students in "star" in an apple by cutting through the horizontal middle of an apple.

"The Apple Of My Eye" This makes a nice bulletin board display. Have each child draw his or her self-portrait on a piece of white paper. Make a large apple on red construction paper and cut out the inside. I have patterns made up for this where the students fold the piece of paper in half and trace with a pattern and cut. This makes it very easy to cut out the inside the apple. Add a stem and leaf. Glue the white self-portrait paper onto the back of the apple so that the apple serves as a "farm" for the picture. Put an a bulletin board titled The Apples of Mrs. ________'s Eye."

Make mini booklets with a page for each season. Draw what an apple tree looks like in each season. Q-tips work great for making apples on the tree. Pink tissue paper makes nice blossoms.

Read one of the biographies of Johnny Appleseed. Have a group of students draw a large picture of Johnny Appleseed on white bulletin board paper. Color. Ask for students to recall facts about Johnny Appleseed from the story. Write each fact on an apple cut out and glue around the outline drawn on the paper.

Make applesauce with your students! Have each student bring in an apple. Peel with an apple peeler or have moms help out and peel the apples for you. Cook in crockpot and then put through a strainer. Yum-applesauce!

Make mini apple pies with canned biscuits and apple pie filling. Add a little filling to each biscuit and fold in half. Press the edges closed and bake according to the biscuit instructions. There you have it! Little apple turnovers!

Red Hot Baked Apples:
1. Wash whole apple and ream out core with apple corer or knife.
2. Slice off bottom so apple will sit flat in electric frying pan.
3. Fill core with cinnamon red hots.
4. Sprinkle with cinnamon and nutmeg.
5. Bake in covered electric fry pan at 350 degrees for about 30 minutes.
6. Cool 10 minutes
7. Eat and enjoy!

Have each student bring in an apple from home. On a graphing mat graph the apples by size, color, etc..Pick one of the sorting categories and have the students copy it onto a piece of graph paper for a representational graph.

All Around the Apple: This is a picture of my apple. The color of my apple is ____________. (Draw a picture of apple.)

The mass of my apple is the same as _______________ teddy bears. (teddy bear counters)

Measure around the apple with a string.
The string measures the same as a train of _______unifix cubes or ______teddy bears.

Cut your apple in half. Make a sketch of each piece.

How many parts all together? Each part if called one-__________ or 1/2.

Cut each half in two parts. Make a sketch of each piece now.

How many pieces all together?______

Each piece is called one __________ or 1/4.

Taste a piece of the apple. Write about your apple.

-The September 1993 AIMS Newsletter also focuses on apples and the amount of water in them. I didn't post the information here because it is quite lengthy and is more appropriate for higher grades.