Fun Day - Johnny Appleseed Day

We started off our day by reading a Johnny Appleseed book.  There are quite a lot out there, most of which are quite good and can vary in ages.  I chose a simple one just for time's sake.  Then we sang two apple songs:
Johnny Appleseed (tune of BINGO)
There was a frontier pioneer
who planted lots of seeds
CHORUS: Johnny, Johnny Appleseed
Planted lots of seeds!
Johnny, Johnny Appleseed
Grew a lot of trees

He roamed across the country side
Planting apple seeds
CHORUS
When travelers passed, Johnny asked
Won't you you plant these seeds?
CHORUS
Across the country, orchards grew,
Thanks to Johnny's deeds.
CHORUS

Farmer Brown Had 5 Red Apples (the link takes you to amazon where you can hear a sample of it.  They did 10 apples but for preschool I started with 5).

6 Apple Stations-
Before the stations I gave each kid an apple lap book idea from here and a marker.  This just helped so they weren't having to carry around a bunch of pieces of paper and losing them. 

• Apple Taste Testing - they tasted applesauce, dried apple slices, apple juice, apple pie, and apple butter.  In their lap book was a page where they marked yes if they liked it, no if they didn't.  Then they had to pick their favorite and write their name under the favorite.

• Apple Math - we measured the circumference of the apple, weighed the apple, then found out weither it would float or not.  I had cute apple shaped book in their lap book that explained everything, but I can't find where I got it from.

• Apple Tree Seasons - we used pictures from the Johnny Appleseed book to see how an apple tree looked during all the seasons.  Then we finger painted it on (ie winter-snow, spring - pink & white blossoms, summer - green leaves, fall- leaves and apples). In their lap book was a page with just 4 tree trunks.  They added the rest.

• Apple Experiment -They had to take 3 apple slices and put them in 3ziploc bags.  Then they had to add something to it to try to keep the apple from going brown.  One had to be lemon juice, but then they could pick the others (you can have whatever you want).  They leave them then come back and see what happens. The lap book had a page where they could draw pictures of their experiment.

• Johnny Appleseed Glyph-  I made the cut outs for this myself without a pattern.  They had to put the parts of johnny appleseed together by answering questions about them selves.

·     Shirt Patches - Draw as many patches as how old you are
·     Neck Tie -     2 triangles = you are a  boy
               1 triangle= you are a girl
·     Nose -        circle nose = you are in preschool
               oval nose = you are not in preschool
·     Hair -        black = you  have a pet
                blonde= you don't have a pet
·     Pot Handle -   to the left= you use your left hand
              to the right = you use your right hand
·     apple -        the color of your favorite kind of apple
·     Leaves -       the number of leaves as are the number of people in your family

• Apple Tree Life Cycle - they watched this you tube video, then they had to put the pictures of the life cycle of an apple tree in order.  I got the pictures from here.

WARNING:  THIS WILL TAKE LONGER THAN AN HOUR! 
I found out the hard way (you might be saying, duh! :)  ).  I'm always scared that everything will go faster than I planned, but it didn't.
I wanted to end with this you tube video, because it reviews everything you learn from each center, but we didn't get to it.  In fact, not everyone finished the centers.  We did get to watch the Disney's Johnny Appleseed.  I had fun!