Apples!

We had such a great week learning all about apples!  We began the week by learning a short poem that helped us learn the letters A, P, L, and E.  Students were able to use a pointer to point to each letter as they said it.

In dramatic play, we added an apple orchard!  Students were able to pick apples from the trees, take them to the market stand and pay for them.  The farmer "re-planted" the apples back on the trees for the next friend to pick.  

We worked on many fun apple craft projects this week including apple peel painting, apple stamping, and making sequin apples.

We used our fine motor skills to manipulate the glue bottle to make tiny dots of glue.  We also had to use our pincer grasp to pick up the tiny sequins and place them on the apple.  We practiced matching colors by placing the red sequins on the red part, green sequins on the green leaf, and gold sequins on the brown stem.  Using the little muscles (fine motor skills) in our hands makes our hands stronger so we are better able to color, write, cut, and draw!

Apple stamping was fun!  Students dipped half of an apple in paint and made a print on paper.

We practiced sorting apples this week as well!  We sorted by color, shape, and number of seeds.  By the end of the year, we hope that students will be able to sort by at least one attribute and explain how they sorted (by color, shape, size, etc.)

Miss Charlette (our practicum student) has been doing a fantastic job!  She will be teaching the class full-time for two weeks in November.

Students made their own apple counting books.  They placed the correct number of "apples" on the tree on each page.

 We also started work in our Handwriting Without Tears books.  We begin by getting our hands ready to write by "scribbling in" pictures, and will move on to trying to color in the lines in a few weeks.  Once our hands are nice and strong, we will begin to form letters!

We encourage students to use the proper crayon grip and also use their "helping hand" to help them hold their paper.

Our books take a lot of hard work, and sometimes you might see a smiley face on your child's hand for being a hard worker and making their muscles strong!

 Of course, apple week wouldn't be complete without eating some apples!  Students tried red, green, and yellow apples and then made a cut-out of their favorite kind and put it on the apple tree that matched.  Look in our hallway to see what your child's favorite kind of apple was!

 On Friday, we had an apple tasting celebration.  We made applesauce in class, and also tried apple cupcakes, apple juice, and apple flavored crackers!  Yum!

We had a great week!