Hey there! Well, I’m a bit late to this party, but I wanted to share with you the cutest idea for celebrating Johnny Appleseed’s birthday! Johnny Appleseed’s birthday is on September 26th, which just so happened to be a Friday this year! {I feel much less guilty for doing fun things on Fridays!}
So, I first had the task of explaining to my kinders who Johnny Appleseed was. Luckily, I had just gotten this book from Scholastic:
This book was much better than the ones that I read last year. Every Johnny Appleseed book that I find seems to be old, very wordy, and for a much older audience. This book was PERFECT! It explained exactly who Johnny Appleseed was in a way that my kinders understood. And it had great illustrations!
We had a great discussion about WHY Johnny Appleseed wore a pot on his head, and then it was time for the fun part- making our own Johnny Appleseed hats!
They are such cute “pots,” just like the one that Johnny Appleseed wore! The photo is too far away to tell, but the apples say “Michael Appleseed” and “Jody Appleseed” after the students’ names! Love it! After they created their hats, we read a poem about apples and highlighted our sight words!
We didn’t do any apple baking this year because of our schedule, but our fabulous neighbors across the hall made apple pizza and shared some with us! It was delicious!
We will be doing more apple-themed activities once we go on our field trip to an apple orchard on October 15th!
Want to grab your own Johnny Appleseed hat template and a copy of this poem? Click below to grab them both for FREE!
{*To create the hats, you will need two 6″x9″ pieces of construction paper for the hat itself. These will be stapled together to fit around your head. The pot handle is one 3″x9″ piece of brown construction paper that I just rounded the edges of. This is glued right to the hat itself!}
I hope you can use these freebies to celebrate Johnny Appleseed’s birthday next year!
