Apples, Apples & More Apples

In honor of Johnny Appleseed's Birthday on Monday, we took time this whole week to celebrate his gift to us... the apple. We have done lots of apple math and apple art. To end our week we enjoyed a delicious taste test of red, green, & yellow apples. Of course, there was also a surprise apple too. It was a "trick" apple that I made from Oreo's dipped in colored chocolate. I'm sure that you aren't surprised, but this was really our favorite. You can see our friend below with her apples. (The children had to taste all three real apples before they could earn their cookie treat.)

We also talked about how an apple tree grows...starting with the very seeds that Mr. John Chapman (also know as Johnny Appleseed) shared with those he met so many years ago. Seeds lead to flowers than apples. The tree produces so many that you collect baskets full to make delicious apple pies. I usually bake pies with our class, but had to move this to a later date due to our special guest this week.
The children made an art collage for their family tree that took all week to complete. The base tree was painted on Monday, we added leaves on Tuesday, apple stamps on Wednesday and finished up today with our fingerprint leaf. These are being displayed in our room and it is amazing how different they all are. The trees are totally child created with help from Mrs. Laurie & I on the apple stamps and leaf stamps. These trees totally represent each family and I think that you will be surprised to see who they chose to include. I don't dictate who is the family tree, your child adds as many as apples as they want for those that they include in your family.
The final art project was our stained glass apple. It is kind of complicated, but always turns out so beautiful. This is one of those art projects that takes several days to finish because it requires attention to detail, not to mention it is pretty complicated. They are hanging above our work tables in our room.

As you can see we had quite the week of apple education. The big message for us is that God's love abounds just like apples do on trees. They also start from a tiny seed, but grow to be so big and full of fruit. We just kind of break it down to mean...share God's love. You can do this one tiny seed at a time. Thinking of this makes me sing our favorite blessing..."oh the Lord's been good to me. And so I thank the Lord. For giving me the things I need... the sun and the rain and the apple seed. The Lord's been good to me!"