I Know A Fruit That Grows on Trees

Have I mentioned that I have a serious obsession with apples??  I don’t know if you agree with me, but apples always taste better this time of year. I have a board FULL of apple{ish} recipes I pinned and I’m going to *try* to make {at least} half of them.  I’ll also be shopping for a new {larger} wardrobe in the process ;)  Even though we’re still rockin’ the 80-90 degree temps down here in the south,  I’m definitely feeling the Fall weather in my heart ;)

My absolute most FAVORITE apple has got to be  the {ridiculously expensive} honey crisp.  I could eat one every.single.day {if I didn’t think I’d go into bankruptcy}.  Seriously…why are they so stinkin’ expensive?!   My *newest* obsession is Yoplait’s limited edition apple crisp yogurt.  TO.DIE.FOR!!!!!!  Y’all…if you haven’t tried it yet, you MUST!  Especially if you’re an apple lover like me :)

I never shared with y’all some of our apple fun, so I thought I’d take this semi-relaxing Saturday morning to show y’all what we’ve been up to.

We’ve done a lot of informal graphing activities, but I used Deanna Jump’s Apple Unit to really dig deep and teach the kids about bar graphs and picture graphs.  Eeeek!!!  They are doing SO well!!!!  I followed up our Apple graphing with some Fire Safety graphing from Kim Adsit’s Fire Safety Unit {amazing, by the way}.  I LOVE that my kids are able to tell me the difference between a bar graph & picture graph and we’re even starting to understand WHY creating & reading graphs is so helpful for understanding data.

 

We’ve been talking a lot about labeling and we followed up some of our discussions with a little apple labeling activity.  My babies did SO well!!!   Last year, I had my kids assemble the little apple craft and then write their own labels.  My kids are working toward that now and they’re doing SO awesome! 

 

We’ve also been learning about making lists….SO, we made a list of different things that can be made from apples…apple juice, apple pie, applesauce, etc. We talked about some of our favorites then I had the kids choose one thing to use in their writing on a little “apple man”. Love. This would’ve been fun to do as a glyph, but I wasn’t thinking that far ahead! HA!

Speaking of making lists, we just started *Top It* on Friday.  This is just a little activity where the kids make a list of all the words they know how to write…and they’ve got 10 minutes to do it!  Y’all…I was SO proud of my babies!  They did AWESOME!  I forgot how much I really do LOVE Kindergarten…they make such HUGE strides and progress in such a short amount of time…it’s always so amazing to see!  At the beginning of the year, we assessed our kids on letter identification & sound.  I re-assessed them before report cards went home yesterday and ohmiword…I almost started crying.  Two of my sweeties who started the year not knowing many letters and hardly any letter sounds knew them ALL!!!!!  Did you hear me scream?!?!  Yes, ALL!!!  I couldn’t be more excited for them  and they were SO proud of themselves.  Moments like those remind me why I love teaching this age!  Truly awesome!

Now we’re gearing up for the weeks ahead.  Bats, spiders, pumpkins, and Halloween.  Not to mention the 50th day of school and the election!  If you’re looking for a few more ideas to add to your teaching bank, here are a few resources that might be helpful.

 

We had SO much fun on the 50th day of school last year!!!  You can read all about it HERE and see how I used some of my activities in the classroom.  And even though we weren’t close to an election in February, we learned all about the election process and even had a mock election based on some popular presidential themed children’s books.  FUN!  Looking forward to these next few weeks of fun and learning!!!  This time of year is ALWAYS my favorite!!  Okay, well this time of year and the end of May ;)  Now I’m off to finish decorating the house for Halloween.  I’m WAY behind this year and Mr. Spouse is {im}patiently waiting for me to clear the boxes out of the kitchen!  Here’s what I have so far…

 

I swear I’ll get it done today.  I swear I’ll get it done today.  I swear I’ll get it done today.  But in all honesty, this is my life….

Makes me laugh every.single.time. 

Have a great weekend, sweet friends!