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

We are linked up:

Tot School Week 5

Mustang is 48 months, Charger is 22 months.

Tot School was a bit shorter this week, but we still had a lot of fun. One reason it was shorter was that Mustang had a dentist appointment. In the waiting room we found the book 'Show Me Your Smile.'



Normally, I dont recommend character books. In fact, I generally avoid them. But, this one was great! It described exactly what was going to happen when Mustang got into the big chair to see the dentist. It really calmed her fears and helped her know what to expect. If your tot is headed to the dentist, I highly recommend picking this book up first.

Back at the house...

We read the book Pastry School in Paris, which talks about measurement. It was a very cute book, but it really was a bit too old for my kiddos.


Then, we weighed things using this super cool scale we checked out at our library. Yes, we have the coolest library on earth and I am going to miss it sorely when we move :(



Mustang was interested in the weighing for a few minutes, Charger could care less. So, plan B...

I gave them each a container of beans and some measuring cups and spoons and let them measure and pour and transfer till their hearts content. Mustang wanted the scale, too. They poured for a long long time. Then they switched bean containers and poured again. 2 hours later, my shag carpet had a lot of beans on it, but they had a great time. This was by far the favorite activity of the week.






We read the book Applesauce Season. Great book!


Then, after a lunch of sandwiches and applesauce, we made these cute apples. I got the idea from My Montessori Journey. I didnt have any white paper plates and our heart shaped princess plates were not going to cut it, so I cut white circles out of cardstock.

I gave the kids strips of red construction paper and they tore them into smaller pieces to glue to the circle. I tore Charger's and he helped me put the red pieces on the drops of glue I put down. Mustang tore the pieces too small at first, but quickly got the hang of it.




Mustang received her first piggy bank from my parents for her birthday. We had fun going over the values and names of her money. But, the best part was putting the money IN the bank. Great fun and great hand eye coordination-especially trying to put the dollar bills in the little hole. I had to fold them up tight, but both Mustang and Charger were successful in putting the money in the slot. They were quite pleased.




We checked out this fantastic Time pack from our local library. It included the following items plus Eric Carle's Grouchy Ladybug. Both the Grouchy Ladybug and Monster Math School Time have pictures of clocks throughout the story. I had Mustang tell me the time on the clock in the book and then match her clock to the book. She could tell me the clocks that were on the hour, but no others. The toy clock only moved clockwise, so it really helped to teach her how a clock moves (she kept trying to make it go counter-clockwise). Charger loved the clock. He carried it around saying 'clock, clock.'

I picked up a cool workbook on time at our local Dollar Tree and took out the page that focused on clocks that were on the hour. I used Izzie, Mac & Me's reusable worksheet idea. It worked perfectly! So nice to know I can use it again in the future.





I found these big foam blocks at a yard sale for a 1.00 a few years back. GREAT investment! First we matched blocks. If you notice, there are different patterns in the blocks and Mustang thought we should make sure that not only the colors matched, but the patterns. Then we put them in order A-Z and 0-9. We stopped from time to time to sing the ABC song so that Mustang would know the next letter. This was great for increasing matching skills and alphabet order for Mustang. Charger worked on hand eye coordination and practiced the ABC song. It was also great fun!





For more fun ideas to teach your tot, check out 1+1+1=1 to see what others did this week.

100 Apples

I have fallen in love with the site My Montessori Journey, so you will see a lot of ideas from there. Here is another great idea I borrowed.

For this game, there are little cards with apples on them. They have between 0 and 10 apples. Mustang had to pick a card and then color that many apples on her tree. When she was done, there where 100 colored apples. On My Montessori Journey, she suggests laminating the tree, and I intend to do that when I have a laminator.