Our Apple Week

Well, it actually lasted more than a week :)   There were so many activities and books that I could have gone on another week or two.  But I am definitely learning that I really have to pick and choose or we never move on to the next topic.  Here are a few of our highlights from our study.

Making our Fruit Poster on Day 1.  This helped introduce the biblical concept for the week which focused on the fruits of the spirit and staying in Jesus.

Apples Taste Testing - they compared the taste, textures and smell of the apples.   They recorded their findings in little booklets I found on Homeschoolshare.

The little ones tasted and recorded too.  I just gave them a sheet with the apples on the left and they colored another apple next to it if they liked that particular one.  I'm sure there was a better way to do this but I thought of it last minute when I realized they needed a recording sheet too.  They were happy with it so it worked.  

They made some cute torn paper apples on small paper plates.  Anything with glue is exciting for them.  I wish I would have purchased more at the beginning of the year when they were 25 cents per bottle.

They also made these adorable little trees. I traced their hands and then they cut out the ovals for the tops of the trees.  They didn't want to dip their fingers in paint for the apples so they just glued some apples all over their trees.  The crazy thing about this adorable craft is that when it was done I realized that the brown trunk and limbs was supposed to go over the green oval.  Now I can't even see their sweet little hand tracing.  I think we'll do this one again and I can be more careful with reading the directions.

Caroline made an apple shaped mini-book about the seasons of an apples tree.  She made this after we read The Seasons of Arnold's Apple Tree by Gail Gibbons.

I found these Counting Apples books for the twins.  They were a hit!

We learned about the different parts of the apple during the week so Caroline did really well reviewing and coloring the apple parts with the littler ones.

Naturally, they wanted their own to color with their babies.

One of the last activities they did was drawing and coloring a worm's house (inside of an apple).  Even Calsita wanted to do this.

Although it seems our time was filled with crafts and activities we still did manage to fit in our reading activities.  We spent time practicing the phonograms which draws Calista in as well.  I know it's different than what is outlined in MFW for phonics but it's a better fit for Caroline.  We still do most of the reading activities in the manual and Caroline loves leading some of them with Courtney and Claire.   Here they are matching the picture cards to the correct letter sounds.

I think I added too much this time but all in all, we had fun and a lot of learning took place.  I saw Courtney and Claire take part more than ever and it was really exciting.