Johnny Appleseed
Books:
The Story of Johnny Appleseed Aliki
An Apple a Day by Judy Barrett
The Seasons of Arnold's Apple Tree by Gail Gibbons
Johnny Appleseed by Lous Sabin
Johnny Appleseed by Patricia Demuth
Johnny Appleseed My Story by David Harrison
Johnny Appleseed Storybook Landoil
Johnny Appleseed: A Tall Tale by Steven Kellogg
1. There are so many activities to do for Johnny Appleseed that fit in with our apple theme. I have listed some of the ideas and projects that are in my file. Many of them are copyrighted and I am not able to print them. I have given credit to the ideas that I received from other teachers or web sites.
2. Celebrating Johnny Appleseed's birthday is one of my favorite activities. His birthday is September 26. I received this idea from Leslie K at teachers.net several years ago. We do this at the end of our apple unit. Each child brings a cooking pot from home! I send a note home (shown below) a few days before to explain the activity. Make sure that you say "cooking pot!" One year I had two children arrive with a flower pot to wear! We put the pots on and go outside to scatter "grass" seeds instead of apple seeds. We usually do some type of cooking activity for our snack on this day, too! See apple recipes on previous page. Here is a picture of my class on "Johnny Appleseed Day." We include this in the end of they year slide show and their scrapbooks.
click on photo to enlarge
3. Make a paper bag puppet of Johnny. I have a pattern that is copyrighted, but you can make your own. His body is done in two parts. The top part of his head is put on the bottom of the paper bag with his mouth and the rest of his body on the bottom section of the bag. The children can put their hand in the bag to make him talk! We put an apple in apple in his hand.
4. There are a couple of very good movies available about Johnny Appleseed's life. I even remember seeing the Disney movie when I was in school.
5. Make a book about Johnny Appleseed. After reading several books and seeing the movie, we make a class book. Each child finishes a sentence about what they liked best about Johnny Appleseed. The stories are illustrated and bound into a book. You can also use paper that has been cut into the shape of an apple for a cute book!
6. Sequencing a story about his life. The book that we make is made with two sheets of copy paper that has been divided into four sections. (a total of eight small pages for their book.) The book tells the important things about his life and what he did to help people in settling the west.