Skip to main content

Literature Based Kindergarten Curriculum, Johnny Appleseed.

Primary Literature

  • Johnny Appleseed by Steven Kellogg. This biography briefly covers Johnny Chapman's life from his birth to his death. The prose appeals to young listeners and is easy for them to follow along. The whimsical and colorful illustrations are also captivating.

  • Vocabulary words to review.
    • tall tale -  an exaggeration of a story, has unbelievable elements
    • tranquil - quiet and calm
    • boisterous - noisy and rowdy
    • cellar - a room below the ground
    • orchard - land where fruit trees grow
    • frontier - the edge of settled land/undiscovered

Complementary Literature 
  • The Seasons of Arnold's Apple Tree by Gail Gibbons, tells tale of a young boy and the adventures he has with his apple tree. It offers a kid friendly explanation of what happens to an apple tree during the different seasons. 
  • Apples also by Gail Gibbons, explains in kid friendly terms the parts and life cycle of an apple. It also offers a brief history, shows different varieties, and uses of an apple
  • The Apple Pie that Papa Baked - A play off the song The House that Jack Built. This cute repetitive story is a delight to read and listen too. Even though this book is newer (2007) the illustrations remind me of classic children’s books, like those by Virginia Lee Burton; they are filled with detail but yet there is something simplistic about them. 

Other Complementary Materials
  • American Legends: Johnny Appleseed,  This animated tale from Disney focus more on the legend than fact, but it was very enjoyable to watch. It also spoke to the spirit of why Johnny Appleseed became such a popular tale. 
  • Wholesome Heros with Rick Sowash: Johnny Appleseed, I found this film to be a little dull and corny at some points but my children, however, seemed to enjoy it. It was very factual and offered explanations on why/how Johnny Chapman became such a tall tale. 

Learning Activities/Games


  • Green and red apple dice game: children roll dice to see how many of their apples (pom poms) the can take off from the tree. The first child to remove all their apples wins.







Art
Supplies: 4 sheets of card-stock, tempera paint, glitter, 24 pipe cleaners, hot glue, 
tissue paper, white glue, buttons, and pom poms

Step 1: Paint (seasonal) backgrounds on to each card-stock.


Step 2 - Twist six pipe cleaners together at the bottom to
form a trunk. Fan out tops to make branches. Repeat three more times. 


Step 3 - Once paint is dry, use hot glue to secure pipe cleaners to card-stock.
(white glue also works, but it's tedious)


Step 4: Now add tissue paper, pom-poms, glitter, etc to each tree to represent
the changes of a season. 



finished product


If you are looking for more apple themed ideas please stop by my apple unit pinterest board or check out our homeschool page.

Comments

Post a Comment

Thanks for taking the time to leave a comment - you make me smile :)

Popular posts from this blog

A Little Red Cardboard Barn

We've finished our farm unit and are moving on to a new theme tomorrow - but before we do I wanted share the barn we made. The wooden farm animals came with a beautiful handmade ark that we gave Big Buddy for Christmas a couple years ago.  I would someday love to have a wood barn but it's currently not in the budget. So in the mean time we decided to improvise and make our own.  I stumbled upon this perfectly sized milk box (4 gallons per box) while subbing and thought it would be sturdy enough to handle play. Hubandie and the boys used an x-acto knife and wood glue to build a barn shape. to get the doors to fold out hubandie used an x-acto knife and scored the inside of the cardboard We then painted with a basic primer and outlined a window and a door with painters tape. cardboard is very porous so priming is a must if you want decent coverage Big Buddy however insisted that we add more windows so it looked like the barn in our book The Big

Preschool Syllabus: Dr. Seuss

Normally I'd do a Dr. Seuss unit in March around his birthday. We had to do one now though because on Saturday Big Buddy and I going on a date to a  Dr. Seuss exhibit . The exhibit is only at the museum until January and I'm afraid if we don't go now we might not get the chance. We are of course reading lots of Dr. Seuss's books. A great advatage to studying Dr. Seuss in November rather than March is that all his books were available at the library. I also found a great children's biography which is perfect for preschoolers. Pebble First Biographies: Dr. Seuss  We've read it a couple times and Big Buddy loves reciting all the facts he's learned WRITING CENTER ADDITIONS big buddy's name in sand paper letters, coloring pages  & mazes from seussville.com skills practiced: fine motor, letter recognition, creativity,  reading comprehension LEARNING "TRAYS" -   I rotate these, setting out about four a day from which the boy&#

Jack-O-Lanterns on the Fridge

Last fall I saw the idea for refrigerator pumpkins with face pieces in FamilyFun Magazine  and have been anxious to recreate them ever since. It was pretty quick and easy and since the only thing we didn't have on hand was magnetic sheets ($1.50 with coupon at Joann's) it was also very cheap. my supplies: magnetic sheets, orange & black construction paper, white pen, tacky glue *i know they have self adhesive sheets but my Joann's didn't carry them   glued (very messily) and ready to cut Both the boys were quite enthused when they discovered them after rest time :) Hopefully it will keep them entertained until we carve real pumpkins.