Hi Mom,Tree trunk at the bottom
Leaves at the top,
Apples falling off the tree,
Plop, plop PLOP!
This week was all about apples for preschool. We learned this poem about an apple tree. It took us lots of practice, but we even memorized it with hand gestures!
With the weather being so beautiful now that it's fall, we spent some time outside. We made a huge apple tree to display our poem by stamping handprints in green for the leaves and in brown for the trunk. Then we added apples by slicing a real one in half and stamping with it! We all love to paint and we laughed because it tickled when Ms. Marianne painted our hands (and arms later on for our own trees!) to stamp with.
We discussed the life cycle of an apple- from seed to sapling to mature tree to blossom to apple to harvest and back to seed again. Sapling was a new word for us and we did a great job remembering it! Outside, we painted apple trees of our own with apples on them that showed the cycle, which we had to put in order using our sequencing skills and by looking at the non-fiction books in our library if we got stuck. 
We observed that apples come in many colors and combinations of colors. Red, yellow and green apples are the basic colors that apples grow in. We explored all of these types of apples this week. We used our senses to see, smell, touch and taste all of them! Our reading practice included new words: am, and & like. Our sentences were all about apples! During our exploration of apples, we sampled each apple type and graphed our favorite type- our class likes red apples the best!
Each of us created a book of our very own about the different kinds of apples. Our books help us to read one word at a time by placing a finger on the dot under each word as we read. The books use our sight words that we're learning (I, see, a, color words, apple, etc.) and help to build our confidence as we learn to read and handle books. We illustrated our books by using our halved apples to stamp with again. 
Our final learning adventure of the week was to create- from scratch- our very own apple pie! We read / watched The Apple Pie Tree, by Zoe Hall and discussed again how the apples come to be. Here is a link to watch it again with our family! http://youtu.be/VL5EIhU_UPk?t=30s
Each of us had a special job to do to make our pie, and we got to switch jobs so everyone got a turn to do almost everything else. We measured spices, rolled pie dough, peeled and cut up apples (using butter knives!) and mixed them with the spices and sugar. When the apples were in the crust, we all got a turn at fluting the edges of the crust (making the pretty, ruffled design around the edge) and then Ms. Marianne put it in the oven. While we waited for it to bake, we practiced our poem again and read more books about apples.
It was so hard to wait for the 50 minute baking time to pass, but it was worth it to taste that yummy, sweet and bubbly apple filling inside the crumbly crust. :) We were all so proud of our pie!
Next week we will be focusing on pumpkins and visiting the pumpkin patch! I can't wait!
Love,
Your Child
and
Ms. Marianne
