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Wednesday, September 23, 2009

Apples And Apple Related Activities

Autumn is in the air. Mornings are cool and crisp and afternoons are sunny and filled up with the last warm breath of summer. Beautiful New England autumn...
The change of seasons, our Saturday farmers' markets and of course, reading blogs of my fellow-bloggers gave me an inspiration for this post.
September is an apple picking month and also, on September 26th we celebrate the birthday of Johnny Appleseed. Last year Pumpkin and I attended Johnny Appleseed's birthday party at our local public library. We listened to the story about him read by the librarians, tasted apple treats washing them down with apple cider and did apple related crafts. It was a great time and this year I decided to do something similar to that.
First, we read the book How Do Apples Grow? by Betsy Maestro that tells the story of an apple from a tiny bud to the final result - fruit.

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I especially like the simplicity of the illustrations that deliver the concept of flower fertilization to even the youngest of botanists. Look at that!




Maybe it was not that easy for my 5 year old to grasp the idea of how apples grow from the first time but I am pretty sure that after a couple more times of reading it she'll be correcting me sequence of events.
To explore the apple core with its seeds we cut a couple of apples across to observe the star-shaped compartments. We took the seeds out, counted them and compared to the flower seeds we planted outside earlier this month. Then, we did the classic apple printing giving it our own abstract twist. You can see the star-shaped compartments of the apple core her and there.

Check out what you can do with apple printing and apples at The Wonder Years as well.

After that we could not skip the classic "apple" book Ten Apples Up On Top! by Theo LeSieg.

It is a good book for reading beginners and also it is a good one for those who are learning to count up to 10.
I had a Flipbook: Matching and sequencing by Learning Playground. It is suitable for kids from around 2,5-3 and up.

It was a bit easy for my Pumpkin(she didn't show any enthusiasm at all) but we did a sequence with apples anyway. Here it is.


We did a whole lot more ...and still doing it. Stay tuned. ;)

3 comments:

Samantha Gianulis said...

bought some crisp pink lady apples yesterday and they were the best i've veer had. i love cutting apples in half, painting them then stamping them.

Dawn @Moms Inspire Learning said...

Science, math, and literacy really go hand in hand here! How wonderful.

In my home state, students don't learn about pollination until 4th grade, so you're giving your child a real head start here. Now that it's pumpkin time, I think you'll find that the book From Seed to Pumpkin, by Wendy Pfeffer, would complement this lesson nicely.

Thank you for stopping by my blog. I'm really enjoying yours!

SmartPumpkin'sMom said...

Thank you, Dawn, for the recommendation on our reading list. I'll be on the look out for this one. ;)