Homeschool Preschool theme: Apples

This week the theme for ds4's preschool was apples.  I am always amazed at how much not only my kiddos learn, but I learn from our homeschooling studies.  I wish I had used these monthly/weekly "themes" with my older boys when they were younger...they are fun for all. :)

Here are the books we used for this week.

I had several resources sitting in my homeschool closet, including a Mailbox Magazine with an apple theme, (aug/sept 08) and a Centered On Learning (Fall edition) with apple ideas galore.  I also picked up several wonderful little booklets from the Apple Pie Tree unit at Homeschoolshare.com.

First we made up a shape book from Enchanted Learning.

In it are pages with apple facts, info about Johnny Appleseed, and the name for apple in several languages.

We went to the store and bought several different varieties of apples for a taste testing session.

Someone should warn us about how messy learning can be. ;)  Along with the taste testing we learned about how many seeds are in various sizes of apples.  And then of course...

We planted some.  I don't know if anything will come of this, but if we can grow stuff from socks, we should be able to grow an apple tree. :P

This is probably the apple project that the gang had the most fun with...bubble prints with apples.

Can you see the bubble coming out of the apple?  How cool is that?  You basically mix equal parts distilled water, dawn dishwashing soap (about 5 tbs each) and a few drops of food coloring in a shallow pan (I used old pie dishes.)  Core an apple, dip the bottom in the solution, and blow through the top hole.

Oooh, that's a good one.  When the bubble pops on the paper you get a masterpiece similar to this...

I only made up two batches of bubble solution (green and yellow) so our masterpieces weren't the best they could have been. :)

Ds2, my 13yo, saw an educational program the other day about bubbles and did some experiments of his own. 

Blow a super big bubble...

and insert your hand inside!  It will only work if your hand is wet.

Ds made a little booklet with a worm bookmark from the Mailbox Magazine.  Too cute.

Hard at work, cutting out the pages.

Our game this week used the same tree "playing board" as last week's leaves theme, but this time we cut out apples and I wrote the numbers 1-9 along with their names on them.

Turn the apples over.  Take turns picking an apple, naming the number, and clapping that number of times.  We also varied it with doing that number of jumping jacks, patting our heads, etc.  Fun! :)  I had ds draw a picture of himself, number 10 small apples we had cut out of construction paper, and we glued the ten apples on top of his drawn head.  Very cute connection to the Ten Apples Up On Top book.  We also made a minibook showing how to "grow" an apple pie with pics from seed, seedling, tree, blossoms, apples and pie in order.  All in all another fun theme for our preschool this week. :)