A is for apple, B is for Bingo

We began our ABC countdown today.  What is that you ask?   Well, it's a way of keeping my sanity!:)

You know how crazy it gets at the end of the year?  I use the ABC countdown to help keep my students on task.  Then, at the end of the day, we do something fun for that day.  I don't tell them ahead of time either (Well they do know one day), so they are already predicting what's happening for the next 25 days.  It was really rather cute to hear them talk about what all it could be for each letter---Until we got to the letter Z.  They were saying, "Are we going to the zoo?" Uhm...no...On the last day, are you CRAZY (was what I was thinking), but I said no, it's not the zoo.  I think that they sometimes think we're going to go places because when we get to the letter W, we are walking to Wendy's for a Frosty.  That's one of my FAVORITE days with my students! :)

I've been doing the countdown for about 7 years now.  I try to switch some things around and do new things each year---especially since I now have coworkers doing it with me.  I want it to be something different for the kiddos each year ;)

Today was letter A.  We did some apple things.  I didn't do a lot of apple stuff in the fall, so we did some things today. It was a good day for all of us.  

We listened to The Seasons of Arnold's Apple Tree (I couldn't find mine, and our library doesn't have it--thank goodness for YOUTUBE) :)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FNOqc4iJNXw 

(unfortunately this one won't load for me)

We made a book of the seasons of the apple tree.

One of our pages the students had to write how they enjoyed eating apples.

It's a good thing we read these books before hand because it brought about lots of discussion.

(Several of my students hadn't seen some of the kitchen utensils, or knew of all the things you could make with apples.)

 We did an apple paper craft. 

If you'd like a copy of the craft page, I found it HERE. (Thanks to Ms. Nelson's class)

 We labeled the parts. (We used stem, leaf, skin, core, and seeds)

 We glued on apple seeds.  I saved them from the apples that we used to make applesauce. 

 They all loved it!  Score 1 for the teacher/baker! :)

If you'd like a recipe for this applesauce, you can click HERE to see an old post! :)

Which brings us to tomorrow--B is for Bingo.  

My class LOVES Bingo.  

**An alternative to the real Bingo game--instead of having them find 41, I say find 4 tens and 1 one. 

Tomorrow, we are going to play a blend/digraph Bingo.  

You can click HERE to see it on TpT.