Johnny Appleseed Unit Homeschooling Lesson Plan Ideas Preschool-2nd Grade

So, I somehow read the calendar wrong when doing our school planning this year.  I read that Johnny Appleseed's birthday was on August 23rd.  Ha ha!!!  Apparently we need to do a unit on calendar reading, because his birthday is September 23rd.  A bit early for my kids-but they really don't care.  Works out great for blogging, though, because I can tell you what we did BEFORE his birthday :).

We learned about Johnny Appleseed as part of our group learning each day.  So, we just did a few things each day for five different days.  Here's a peak into what we did:

On the first day, after our school lessons, I popped this DVD into the DVD player. It is Disney's It's A Small World of Fun! Vol. 3.  .  The first episode on the DVD it the old Disney film of Johnny Appleseed.  This has the traditional Johnny Appleseed prayer song.  I liked playing the show before our unit so that my children were already familiar with him before we started.  BTW, we did a short unit on him a couple years ago, but Mustang is the only one who remembered it :).

Day two, we read The True Tale of Johnny Appleseed (top left corner) and Johnny Appleseed by Reeve Lindbergh (bottom left).

It was also the day that I put a few new works out for the little girls.  This is the letter sorting available in my A is for Apple Pack.

Explorer totally got the apple matching from All Our Days.  She was SOOOO PROUD!

Mini Cooper chose the different pictures from Prekinders.  Explorer supervised :). 

Day three we read Johnny Appleseed by Steven Kellog (top right of books above).

Then I we played a game.  I found a free Johnny Appleseed lapbook on Homeschool Share.  Lapbooks aren't really our thing, but I found some great printables in the pack and set to work coming up with different ways to use them.One of these is a fact or fiction little book that was to be made.  I loved the fact or fiction part, little book-not so much-so instead we played 'Johnny Appleseed's Fact or Fiction.' 

 After a lesson on what a fact is and what fiction is, I gave the kids each a fact paddle and a fiction paddle.  

We kept score of who got the most answers right.  Surprisingly, Mini Cooper one the game.  Charger has a long way to go before he understands tall tales, lol!!  They loved the game so much they begged to play it with more then just Johnny Appleseed facts and fiction.  It was fun!

Day 4-ART!!!  Yep, we did art!  That almost never happens (and won't happen again for awhile since I signed the kids up for art classes at our local art museum), but this week we did ART at OUR house...with PAINT!!  And, I even survived, whew.

I found this neat apple art project on Deep Space Sparkle and decided to give it a try.  It came out very well!

We didn't have colored paper to glue the apples to (and BELIEVE ME, I did try to find it at the local Hobby Lobby-sigh), so instead we made place mats to glue the apples to.  I think they came out very cute.  This one is Mustang's.

Day 5 was all about apples.  We read How Do Apples Grow?  by Betsy Maestro-PERFECT book about apples, BTW.  Loved it!

Next up, taste testing!  This was part of the Homeschool Share pack from above.  We recorded our answers.

Check out Explorer trying to swipe more apple!

Apple tasting is every one's favorite!!

Before we cut them open, we predicted how many seeds would be in each apple.  This printable was ALSO from the Homeschool Share pack (great pack if you ask me).  The kids would draw how many seeds they thought would be inside the apple, and then draw how many were actually inside.

Mini Cooper and Charger even drew big apples and drew seeds inside.  They loved the guessing.

In one apple we found the seeds were already starting to sprout-inside.  It was really neat to see after just reading the book.  Needless to say, we did not eat the apple :).

There is one more book in the book photo.  It is a chapter book titled Who Was Johnny Appleseed.  I loved that I didn't have to assign this book to Mustang.  I simply left it on the coffee table for a couple days and after we had talked about Johnny Appleseed, she noticed it and read it without being asked.

So there is our little unit on Mr. Johnny Appleseed.  He is one of my very favorite characters to learn about.  I get to talk about American history, nature, and most importantly, being a missionary, all at one time :).

Oh the Lord is 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.  Oh the Lord is good to me!

God Bless,
Lisa

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