Apple Days and Tally Marks

Oh, what fun we have had this week with apples.  We have celebrated Johnny Appleseed's birthday, learned some about early American life.  During rest time we have listened to a great "tape" about the adventures of Johnny Appleseed.  Many years ago the second graders at our school would entertain us with a musical about Johnny Appleseed.  It was always one of my favorites.  I loved it so much the music teacher gave me a copy of a performance tape from the company who wrote the musical.  It is so sweet, and has so many good character lessons.  And the it tells the story of Johnny Appleseed with such the beautiful music.  My problem with it, is that i go home singing the songs and cannot get them out of my head. LOL!

Take a look a a couple of math activities we did with apples.

Many years ago I made these little felt apples as part of a classroom management system.  Well, after I decided that I did not like what I was doing, I changed to a new system.  But, after putting so many hours  into making these little apples, I was determined to create an activity to use them.  Here is what I cam up with. While holding an apple, the children would pretend that they were apple trees and drop the apple. 

 They would then record the results with tally marks.  We also talked about apple trees do not throw there apples across the yard, they simply fall to the ground under the tree.  

We did this as a large group activity.  I rang a bell and the children would begin dropping their apples.  Amazingly, they were very quiet doing this activity. Trees don't talk.  And they were thinking as they recorded their information.  It is a lot to remember to cross over the fifth tally mark in a group, and to circle two groups pf five to make a group of ten.  

Here is a close up of the apples. 

After enough time for the children to have a good amount of information, I rang the bell to stop.  The children counted how many tally marks they had for each color.  We then did a large chart .  Each child told of which color they had the most tally marks.  We recorded that information in tally marks on our board to  see the results.  Here they are.

This was such a fun activity with so many lessons.  I love teaching and making it fun and meaningful.  That is what creates life-long memories.