Johnny Appleseed Art, Math and Writing Fun

We made some cute Johnny Appleseed Art last week. We used wiggly eyes and buttons and patches out of scrapbook paper. The “pot” on his head is funny to the kids. πŸ˜€ 
The students made their own “favorite color of apple” and glued it on the overalls too. Then we made a class graph of our favorite apple color to eat. And we read some stories about Johnny Appleseed. 

 The link for this fun freebie is from Anna Sanchez. We also have a weekly graph in our classroom we use tiny pics of ourselves to graph things in the graphing pocket chart. I also punched out green, yellow and red apples for kids to choose as they came into the classroom on apple graphing day.  Red apples won the vote. I forgot to take a picture of the graphing pocket chart though. My bad. πŸ˜€

I Am an Apple by Jean MarzolloJohnny Appleseed by Steven KelloggJohnny Appleseed by Madeline Olsen
We sang this song with my auto harp and some instruments for fun. 
Do You Know the Apple Man?Sung to tune of  β€œThe Muffin Man”

Oh, do you know the Apple Man,
The Apple Man, The Apple Man?
Oh, do you know the Apple Man
He planted apple seeds.

He wore a pot upon his head,
Upon his head, upon his head.
He wore a pot upon his head.
His name was Johnny Appleseed.

John Chapman was his real name,
His real name, his real name.
John Chapman was his real name;
But, we call him Johnny Appleseed.


We played this game for math. Then I put it out at the math center. I printed all 32 and then put them in page protectors and have 4 for each season. It is “roll the dice and add 1”. 
The link for this game is  HERE at Oceans of First Grade Fun. Just click on the apple game. There were 32 games!! Woot! 
Yolanda at First Grade Fun also had a doubles roll the dice game that is great for more advanced kids too. Thanks so much Yolanda! 
These guys did a GREAT JOB for their first writing project. I am proud of them. All of them did the Capital I correctly without any do overs. My gifted first graders used to forget and do lower case i. I think I have taught these guys well. πŸ˜€ 

 I started this activity by showing an 8 minute youtube video on Johnny Appleseed. Then I read a short book to the kids asking them questions. One of my favorites is the Steven Kellogg book on Johnny Appleseed, but I also have a little Scholastic one I have used too. Here are some of the questions I ask…..Was he a homeless guy? How did he cook.?What did he do with all those apple seeds? Was he a friend to animals? How long ago did Johnny live? Was he a pioneer?

Fernando has really nice handwriting, yes he does. πŸ˜€

These Johnny Appleseed projects turned out so cute. I love dem…..

The challenge in kinder is to get them to write ON THE LINES. They did a pretty good job!

Johnny Appleseed bulletin board for fall. Love it!

These Johnny Appleseed faces are too funny. One of them has shark teeth! (snicker)

 The writing paper we used was really great because it had a word bank embedded in it. This ALWAYS makes for better writing for beginners because it scaffolds them. They can pick and choose a word to copy and it is right there.

  This one is from Hello Literacy. I thought it was OH so cute! The kids loved coloring after writing their favorite color of fresh apple. Some also copied “Johnny Appleseed”. So it can also help in differentiation. Higher kids will write more. Emergent writers can copy “I like red apples” even in kinder. πŸ˜€

Love the barely there hair, don’t you? lol 

 I found a few very cute, free writing papers for Johnny Appleseed. One is from Dawn M. Key. It would be great for first or second graders who can write a few sentences or a paragraph already. A cute word family game I found as a freebie from Ivy Taul too. It was really cute for beginning readers.

 I really liked a few freebies I found on Teachers Pay Teachers too. This one from Teaching with a Twist had some great graphic organizers for developing comprehension of the story.

 Another freebie by Lisbeth Radcliff had a cute apple math addition worksheet and a mini story about Johnny Appleseed that were great. I liked this Centers Activities set from Abby Buettner too.

There is a list of Doltch Sight Words with cute apples on them from Amy Lattin I downloaded and put on red cardstock and laminated. It will make a great center  to put in the pocket chart or to work with at the reading table too.  

Speaking of apples, Check out my Dried Apple Head Witch Dolls we are getting ready to do for Halloween! Here’s a link.   It is a fun thing to do in October. Have a  Happy Fall Ya’ll!