Second Grade Celebrates 'Johnny Appleseed Day'!

Happy Johnny Appleseed Day!!

 Everyone had a GREAT time on Friday as we celebrated our first theme day: Johnny Appleseed Day! The owls got to visit each second grade classroom and participate in an apple related activity! Earlier in the week we had learned about Johnny Appleseed himself (through reading a Scholastic News article with our 5H reading buddies and watching a BrainpopJr video), so today was all about those apples!
    Their first stop was next door to the kangaroo class to do some apple math with Mrs. Atherton! In there, students found the circumference and diameter of various apples, measured the length of a peel, and estimated how many seeds were hidden in the core.
    After that, it was time to examine apples as scientists with Mr. Saltus! Students got to use magnifying glasses to carefully observe apples and used detailed drawings to record their observations.

Does an apple sink or float?

     After our first two stops, they headed back to our classroom where they worked together to create homemade applesauce! A HUGE thank you to Cate's mom, Mrs. Phelps, and SMS Staffer, Mrs. Jolly, for helping us with this delicious endeavor. Many thanks to YOU all as well, for donating an apple to make this possible!!! Students help core and slice the apples, placed them in the crockpot, added a dash of cinnamon each, and then we set on high for 3 hours (although, we ended up turning the crockpot to low for the last hour!).

    While the applesauce was cooking, 2H headed to their next activity. In Ms. Donlon's room, after watching a musical version of the Dr. Seuss' story Ten Apples Up On Top, they worked hard on completing number models to represent each number 1-10. They then created their own portraits balancing 10 apples on their heads!
    Next up was the Giraffe classroom where students got to closely examine the horizontal cut of an apple and then got to do some apple printing! 

     Welcomed back into our classroom by the delicious wafting smell of our applesauce, in our own classroom, we talked about adjectives. After tasting three types of apples (golden delicious, pink lady, and jazz), we created an "Apple-icious Adjective Tree"!

     FINALLY it was time to take the apples out of the crockpot, place them in the "masher", give it a turn, and enjoy our homemade snack! YUM!!

     I have to commend our Owl Class for all their excellent behavior and hard work. I received numerous compliments from the other second grade teachers. Way to go, Owls! Thanks for making Johnny Appleseed Day such a huge success!!!