Every year as we approach the end of September I have these visions of a study of the life and times of Johnny Appleseed complete with a hands on study of apples. It's been my goal for several years but for many reasons we rarely make it through this dream of a study in it's entirety.
One of those reasons being that I've moved my classroom four times in four years and I often find myself scrambling to find my "stuff." Another possibility is that the beginning of the school year is similar to a running with the bulls event where you just randomly, with very little warning take off in a dead sprint. If you drop something along the way your only choices are to leave it behind or be trampled.
Still, I was determined to DO THIS STUDY. Maybe not as grand and wonderful as I originally planned but we WERE going to learn a few things about Johnny Appleseed, we WERE going to work with real apples, and we WERE going to finish this before it got too late into October and we just had to forgo the remaining activities because we're already getting behind in all things Halloween and it's either let go of Johnny or be trampled by the fast progressing school year, much like you would with the running bulls.
So there we were, it was early September and for the first time in my teaching in my teaching career, and maybe my entire life, I was not feeling like I was already months behind. It's a weird feeling because I'm literally ALWAYS behind but never the less I was feeling on schedule for once. I think!
So I dug my heels in and committed. I bought real life apples, grabbed my Johnny Appleseed file, and made the announcement to my class that we were on the brink of an amazing apple adventure. I was slightly more excited about this than they were but that's not the most important part of this story right now.
We get to the day of our apple investigation and when my little minis laid their eyes on the real life apples I was finally able to get the mirrored excitement I had been waiting for. The excitement quickly turned a little chaotic and resulted in me echo phrases like
"please stop touching the apples"
"please stop letting your apples roll on the floor"
"no we are not going to eat the apples right now"
and.. "you guys, seriously, we're never going to do this again," over and over again.
My hopes and dreams we're going up in smoke right before my eyes.
The initial excitement did die down as well as they're disappointment that the apple on each of their desks was not put for an early snack and we were able to continue on.
We cut the apples and saw the star shaped core, discovered that apples do in fact float in water, observed the decaying process, and took a mini field trip to the school garden to contribute to the compost pile at the end of our study.
The best part however, was the discovery of the many seeds inside each apple. They left that day assuring me there were all going home to plant 5, 6, and even 7 apple trees in their backyards with their newly found seeds though the majority of them I believe were still sitting on the floor at the end of the day.
All in all I would say our study was a success. We know a little about the life of Johnny Appleseed and the process it takes for an apple to grow. We're still grasping the concept of how large the United States is so please don't ask my minis to tell you where the settlers moved to. You may spend hours staring at a map in search for the state of "Mac and Cheez-its."
So I dug my heels in and committed. I bought real life apples, grabbed my Johnny Appleseed file, and made the announcement to my class that we were on the brink of an amazing apple adventure. I was slightly more excited about this than they were but that's not the most important part of this story right now.
We get to the day of our apple investigation and when my little minis laid their eyes on the real life apples I was finally able to get the mirrored excitement I had been waiting for. The excitement quickly turned a little chaotic and resulted in me echo phrases like
"please stop touching the apples"
"please stop letting your apples roll on the floor"
"no we are not going to eat the apples right now"
and.. "you guys, seriously, we're never going to do this again," over and over again.
My hopes and dreams we're going up in smoke right before my eyes.
The initial excitement did die down as well as they're disappointment that the apple on each of their desks was not put for an early snack and we were able to continue on.
We cut the apples and saw the star shaped core, discovered that apples do in fact float in water, observed the decaying process, and took a mini field trip to the school garden to contribute to the compost pile at the end of our study.
The best part however, was the discovery of the many seeds inside each apple. They left that day assuring me there were all going home to plant 5, 6, and even 7 apple trees in their backyards with their newly found seeds though the majority of them I believe were still sitting on the floor at the end of the day.
All in all I would say our study was a success. We know a little about the life of Johnny Appleseed and the process it takes for an apple to grow. We're still grasping the concept of how large the United States is so please don't ask my minis to tell you where the settlers moved to. You may spend hours staring at a map in search for the state of "Mac and Cheez-its."
