Setting Up A Learning Shelf: Apples : Home-Centered Learning

We’re one month into our homeschool year and things are a bit different than they have been in the past. I feel like we’re settling into a good routine and I have absolutely loved adding in pre-school this year. As I’ve grown more confident in homeschooling, I’ve discovered I definitely like using themes and units and it’s been fun to share these ideas with others. It’s mid-September and the first week we spent doing All About Me activities, then we jumped right into Space, and now we’re just finishing up our apple themed activities. Over the next week I am going to keep some simple activities we already have around the house in our shelves (like puzzles, literacy and math activities/games, ect.) and transition in some forest animal activities to finish up September with. I’ve already got a few ideas ready for October and plan to spend the first few weeks doing pumpkins and then, of course, Halloween!

PREPPING THE SHELF

I thought I’d throw this in here this month because it’s a question I’ve been getting asked a lot. I am still figuring things out, but if I waited until I had it all planned out - I wouldn’t ever get to it! So, my advice is just to jump in and start trying things if you want to do something similar - be flexible and let it evolve. The prep for this is varying from about 20-60 minutes per theme…just totally depending on if I already have items around the house we can use OR if I need to find some printables to add some extra games and activities. But, I think it is really fun to pull everything together so I don’t mind it at all. Oh, also, there is usually a trip to the library for books here - which we do every 1-2 weeks anyway so I don’t really count that for prep time. I timed my take down last time and it took about 10-15 minutes - most of that time was spent cleaning up the sensory bin area. I have all my files already organized so I just stick the printables in their files, gather up the books we’re finished with, and put away anything else we won’t need anymore. So far, I think I’ll be rotating the themes out about every two-three weeks - that has felt about right. And, I am sure there will be some weeks I might not even have a theme and just do really simple activities and things we have around the house. I’m adding a picture here so you can see what it looks like without the theme in it. It helps to have a few base items to pull from each week. Has it been worth the time it takes to prep? Absolutely, 100%. I love that we have intentional things to do everyday - at any time of the day. I also love how excited my kids are about it (they usually help me prep and pull everything together and I am always asking for their input on what they’d like to do). My favorite thing about this whole setup though is my kids are always coming and exploring - I have loved coming up on a Sunday afternoon or a random evening and just reading books or playing a game together. It’s a happy place for all of us.

I’ve had a lot of people ask about curriculum I am using or where I get my activities. I like to just do my own thing and pull from a lot of resources. I probably pull the most from Let’s Play School though. If you’re looking for free options - Pinterest always has freebies I can find and if you go to Teachers Pay Teachers you can limit search results by grade and check the free box. We are also using the Waterford Upstart Kindergarten Prep program for my 4 year old, but that doesn’t relate to our shelf activities.

The 2x4 shelf has worked so well for this and it really helps me to match a square + a subject. So, in one square I’ll have a social studies activity, the next a math activity, the next a book to break it up, and then maybe finish the row with an art/craft. The subjects I’m incorporating in are: Art, Science, Music and Movement, Math, LA, Motor Skills, and Social Studies. (I don’t necessarily do all the subjects one week but rotate out activities over a few weeks and sometimes we hit these subjects in other areas my little guy is included on. It just helps to plan viewing things through the lens of these subjects.) Also, there are lots of shelving units that would work for this - but if I didn’t have this piece of shelving nor the space and wanted to do something similar - I would probably prep the activities and keep them hidden and then just set them out on a table or even on the floor so your child could find them and you could do them together. It doesn’t need to be elaborate. I think ages 3-6, 7, even 8 can get bored with textbooks but simple activities like these can really help add some heart and excitement into their work and foster a sense of love for learning. I keep mostly activities in here for my pre-schooler, but my twins have loved a lot of what we’ve done and I try to just bring it up a few notches on the learning level for them.

IDEAS AND RESOURCES

Books: I am starting here because Seed by Seed: The Legend and Legacy of Johnny Appleseed was my absolute favorite book. It just had such a good message and a wonderful tribute to John Chapman. His birthday is September 26 so a lot of people celebrate Johnny Appleseed the last week of September and if you are - I’d highly recommend this book. It touches on his possible spiritual promptings to plant apple seeds and it tells of five footprints John Chapman left behind: use what you have, share what you have, respect nature, try to make peace where there is war, and you can reach your destination by taking small steps. It’s just one of those really good books. My Amazon List contains a list of a bunch of other fall and apple favorites. A lot of people keep the Rothman books on hand and there are some apple references you can pull from in Nature Anatomy and Food Anatomy. My other favorite book I stumbled across was To Everything There Is A Season. It is scripture based and isn’t necessarily related to fall/apples, but it just felt so applicable to the world we are living in right now and tied in well as the seasons are changing - both literally and figuratively. I showed a flip through of these books on my IG and saved it in my story highlights.
We have been doing a letter of the week/craft and did a for apple and t for tree during this unit. I like using the crafts as phonics and a fine motor skill practice. I’ve just been making my own for these. We also used our moveable alphabet (when I went to link this it’s $20 cheaper than what I paid a year ago which is a great deal) - we use our alphabet to practice CVC words for pre-reading/spelling. This is the mat I like to use along side our alphabet. (Also keeping our sandpaper letters close all year long - you know those are a fav of mine). It’s worked out really well to pull a number and letter off our walls as our focus numbers for the week. I made this ABC wall art and this number wall art to go along with our space and it’s been one of my favorite things. If you can make environmental print in your area, I think it is so important.
We used a lot of activities from the the Let’s Play School book club pack (math, language arts, science ect.) But, I also have her Fall Play and Read pack and there is a fun CVC activity with play-doh that worked really well for this unit.
Project Mommy sent us a handful of her printables this month which are super cute and easy to use. She releases themed activities each month so they’ll be easy to pull from if you like doing themes too. In her apple theme we used a sticker activity to help with upper and lower case letters, patterns for math, and the cutest apple investigation for science. The apple investigation was definitely a favorite activity for the theme. I added in a taste test and we graphed the results (just on sticky notes). Turns out we all loved honeycrisp apples and the apples from our gala tree!
Math: We're still working through TGTB Simply Math book (at my son’s pace) and this week I also added in some counting bears and used green, yellow, red counting cubes to work on counting, patterns, and addition 1-10.
Social Studies/Science: Reading How to Make An Apple Pie (which was from our LPS book club) was such a fun way to incorporate some geography. We used the globe to look up the countries.
Sensory Bin: We found and counted printed apples (1-20) and moved them into our apple basket one week. I moved those printables onto our shelf the next week so we could still practice counting with them and then I added in measuring spoons, cups, a mini rolling pin, and mixing bowls so they kids could pretend to make apple pie! This is math, science and fine motor! All of the printables I used for this were from Project Mommy. We finished off the week making real mini apple pies! We used this recipe and it was easy enough my kids could help - just used frozen pie crust to make it a bit more simpler.
Art: LPS book club included a printable of the anatomy of an apple but we also used our Rothman books for this. We cut open the apples and talked about the life cycle and anatomy of an apple. It was super easy to just go in our backyard and look at our apple tree and talk about the seeds and blossoms (science). We pulled some apples off the tree, cut them open and did the classic apple stamping activity (saved the seeds for our letter craft). One day last week, I happened to open IG and see Painted Paper Art’s cute apple painting inspired by Georgia O’ Keefe’s still life painting - which I showed the kids and we talked a bit more about what a still life piece of work is. This is the tutorial we used. And this is my list of art supplies we are keeping on hand this year. I recommend doing this, because, for example, I hadn’t planned to do this activity, but since we already had everything on hand it was easy to pull out and do one afternoon when we had some downtime.