Kindergarten Fall Leaves and Apples

Kindergarten experimented with color mixing with shaving cream and food coloring. We added fall colored food coloring to shaving cream and stirred it in a swirling pattern. The students took turns adding their white construction paper on top of the shaving cream, transferring the color to paper, and then wiped away the shaving cream with paper towel. This left a marbling effect on the paper. The students then practiced tracing and cutting skills by tracing leaves on the paper and cutting them out. In another lesson, they practiced using watercolors and paintbrushes appropriately by painting apples. Their leaves and apples were added to the Kinder bulletin board in a fall display.

Apple Descriptive Writing

The students brainstormed ways to describe an apple on a Circle Map. They then used those ideas to build a Tree Map. The Tree Map was used to write sentences to describe the apple. We use Thinking Maps to help the students organize their thoughts in logical and detailed sentences.

Real Object Graphs: Apples

In math the students learned about various types of graphs: picture, bar-type, and real object. During one of the lessons, they tasted red, yellow, and green apples. They then decided which one was their favorite to place on a real object graph. After making the graph, they  talked with a knee-neighbor about the results. They then individually used the data from the real object graph to create a bar-type graph. They answered ten questions about the data to find what was the most popular type of apple, the least, etc.

Apple Writing

Using our writing program, Write From the Beginning, the students wrote to describe apples. They brainstormed descriptive words on a Circle Map, transferred them to a Tree Map, and then used the Tree Map to write sentences.

Apple Graph

The students recently took a taste test to see which type of apple they liked the best: red, yellow, or green. After choosing their favorite, they created a real object graph to see which type of apple was the most popular and which was the least popular. Using the data from the group real object graph, the students individually created a bar-type graph of the results. They then used the bar-type graphs to answer questions.

Apples!

As a part of our writing program, the students wrote to describe an apple. They first thought of questions they had about apples such as: "What do they look like? What do they taste like? What parts do they have? How can they be used?" They then wrote Tree Maps to answer those questions. They used the Tree Map to help them write sentences. After writing their first draft, the students met with me to edit and revise their writing. While I worked with students one-on-one, the other students created construction paper apples to add to our class apple tree along with their final drafts.

How Do Apples Grow?

Over the last two weeks we have been talking about different types of media and their purposes. Two of the main purposes we talked about last week were reading for entertainment and information. One of the books we read to learn more about the purpose of reading for information was How Do Apples Grow? by Betsy Maesto. After reading and discussing the book, the students wrote about what the topic of the book was and then identified whether the text was for entertainment or information. And, of course, they created an apple to go along with their writing!