It’s September and Fall is coming soon which means it is time to learn about apples and Johnny Appleseed! Johnny Appleseed Day is on September 26th, so that gives us all month to prepare and learn.
I enjoy teaching about tall tales and fairy tales and love reading them to my students too. The stories always peak their interest. It always surprises me how many haven’t heard of them too.
The other benefit of teaching using tall tales and fairy tales is that they teach character education, history and always have a moral or lesson tied to it.
Teaching on Johnny Appleseed has always been one of my favorites, I think because he is such a fun character and I also love the legacy he left.
Project Based Learning
This unit can be done as a Project Based Learning Unit, or you can just use the activities and writing unit. Both have hands on and interactive lessons.
I use it at the beginning of the year to teach about character and being a good citizen. Johnny Appleseed had a way of being friends with everyone, he accepted all types of people, he had great problem solving skills, he helped the environment and his conflict resolution skills were top notch! It goes right along with our Character Education Units.
What students get to do…
In our unit, students get to learn about Johnny Appleseed and the legacy he led. We discuss the good that he did for our environment and how and why his legacy sticks with us.
The students start to relate the way that Johnny Appleseed was a good citizen, that it is our job to be a good citizen in our school and our community.
Practice Being Citizens
The students choose a quick class project to practice being a citizen right away and get to draw or write about their experience.
We also practice our informational writing by writing how Johnny Appleseed was a citizen and how he helped others.
Legacy Project
If your interested in making this a Project Based Learning project check out how we are able to add it in. For the final project, I put them into groups and discuss ideas and ways that even being small we can have an impact.
The students work in groups to create a legacy project. In this project they share ideas and they learn how working together with others can create more ideas. For more information on Project Based Learning click here.
Johnny Appleseed Day
In the end we celebrate Johnny Appleseed Day with a culminating event. We show off what we made and what they learned, the students sing the Johnny Appleseed song, they read their papers, show off their legacy projects, we wear our Johnny Appleseed hats that we made and we make homemade applesauce, which makes the room smell amazing.
Putting together this project is time consuming, but I have already done all the work. Everything is completely done for you and all you need to do is print and teach. Click here for more information and for the directions on how to put together the project.
If your interested, but don’t want to do the legacy project CLICK HERE.
Also, if you are just interested in the FREE Johnny Appleseed Hat pattern, CLICK HERE.
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