Apple Week!

We had so many great apple activities that we had to make it 2 weeks long!

 

 

Everyone brought in an apple and we graphed them by color.

We explored the similarities and differences in the different colored apples.

This is one of my favorite kitchen gadgets to use in the classroom. It's called an Apple Peeler Corer Slicer and it is from the Pampered Chef. We used this to slice our apples for the pie.

This nifty tool allowed us to taste the shoestrings, aka: the apple peel.

Making apple chips in the dehydrator.

Mini apples (aka: water beads) in the sensory table.

We graphed our favorite after we had the taste test.

The finished apple chips.

An apple tree on the sticky table.

Stained glass apples for the window.

Making patterns on the sticky table.

Paper mache apples

 

 

The farmer's market.

Apple Pies:
We painted two paper plates brown, used our fine motor skills to rip red paper for the inside apples, and then glued it all together.

Baking mini-apple pies.

Our apple feast consisted of apple pies, applesauce, and apple chips.

Teddy Bear, Teddy Bear!

Every year since I started teaching, I do a week with a teddy bear theme. We read books with teddy bears, sing teddy bear songs, and on the last day we have a teddy bear Olympics Day. On this day, the kids complete different gross motor activities with the teddy bears at their side.  They walk a balance beam, do a teddy bear toss, sort and graph all the teddy bears, measure the teddies with unifix cubes, and sing and dance with their bears. The teddies can come  to visit on the final day or can stay for the week as long as behavior is good. I make this decision based on the class I have that year and what they can handle. The Teddy Olympics and the letter I send home comes from The Little Giraffes website. If you have never visited, I highly recommend this site for Early Childhood teacher, www.littlegiraffes.com.

The one area I have struggled with for this theme is dramatic play. Last year I attempted a Goldilocks and the Three Bears center, but there wasn't enough action there for the kids. They got bored quickly! This year I was so excited with my idea for dramatic play! A Build-A-Bear Workshop in our classroom. I have no idea how popular Build-A-Bear is in other states, but in Missouri (where the corporate offices are located), most children have been to, or at least heard of Build-A-Bear. This center turned out super cool and the kids really enjoyed it!

Welcome to our Build-A-Bear Workshop in the The Little Owls classroom!

Pick a bear!
I asked co-workers to send in any old stuffed animals they were wanting to get rid of. We de-stuffed the animals with a slit down the back (sounds kind of gruesome) and hot glued some Velcro on the opening so they could open and close the animals.

The Stuffing Station!
After the kids chose their bear, they went to the stuffing station to fill it up as much or as little as they wished. We talked about the more amount of stuffing, the harder the bear. The less amount of stuffing, the softer the teddy!

Some of our decorations!

After the bears are stuffed, the kids take them to the dressing room and choose an outfit.

We had bear pants, dresses, shirts, full outfits, and hats to choose from.



Get a home!
In the "real" store, these are called bear condos, but since our kiddos wouldn't know that term,
 we just called these their homes.

When finished, the kids went to the check-out counter to pay for their bear.
We had a cash register, money, and I even made fake Build-a-Bear gift cards.

 

Our 5 Senses!

This was a fun week for our kiddos as they learned about our 5 senses!  We tried different foods to learn about our taste buds, we looked at our environment through different lenses to experiment with our sight, we played a game where we had to guess the sounds, we felt many different textures, and we played a game where we smelled different scents to guess what they were.

We painted with kool-aid water colors, so our papers smelled yummy!

We used our sense of touch to feel diffeent textures on our feet.

I guess he thought this was a weird feeling!

Not too sure about this one!

Our smelly bottles. We used our sense of smell to guess the scent in the bottle. I dipped cotton balls in different scents such as: vinegar, vanilla, cinnamon, strawberry, garlic, and pickles. The kids LOVED this activity!

See?!!

Hmmm, what is it?

He needed to come to the front and stick his entire face in!!!LOL!

At the end of the week, we completed this sheet by lifting the flap and drawing a
 picture of something we could use for this sense.

One child said we can see a tree, touch blueberries, taste an apple,
hear a baby crying, and smell cinnamon.

A Jelly Belly taste test. I gave each kiddo the same flavor jelly bean and they had to guess what the taste was. I used some common flavors and some different, but familiar flavors such as: cherry, strawberry, popcorn, coffee, orange, and chocolate.

They had fun with this!

Trying to figure it out.