(cheerful music) - Hello, little learners.

Welcome back to my pre-K and TK classroom.

My name is Ms. Lara and I'm going to be your teacher today.

Hello!

Can you tell me your name?

When I put my hand to my ear, I want you to say it as loud as you can, wherever you are.

Ready?

All right, let's see if I guess your special letter.

Here's my board.

Today, I'm going to use one big line down and a big curve.

Let's see.

What letter did I make?

Letter D!

Is that your special letter or the first letter of your name?

Yes, no?

Well, if it's not, maybe I'll get it next time.

Today is day one of the five days that we're going to be together this week.

Let me add my magnet to my board.

See?

One, can you guess what we're gonna learn about?

I'll give you some clues.

We're going to learn about something that has five letters in its name and it's crunchy and comes in different colors and sizes and it's really good to pick right now at the time we're in.

Any guesses?

That's right, apples.

That's what we're gonna learn about this week.

And to start off, I have a fun apple song for you.

Let me grab my apples and if you don't have apples like mine, you can actually use your fists, so get those ready.

The song has a tune like this.

Na na na, na-na-na-na na.

Okay, we're gonna sing it all week, so if you don't know the words today, you'll know them definitely by Friday.

Here we go.

♪ Have you ever seen an apple, an apple, an apple?

♪ ♪ Have you ever seen an apple that grows on a tree?

♪ ♪ A red one, a yellow one ♪ ♪ A pink one, a green one ♪ ♪ Have you ever seen an apple that grows on a tree?

♪ Look at all those different color apples!

Now I wanted to share how to say those colors in Spanish.

Are you ready?

Red is rojo.

Yellow is amarillo.

Pink is rosa and green is verde.

I wish I knew more languages but Spanish is the only other one I know, so maybe you can learn it too.

I think it's time for Miss Maria's letter.

Let me see.

(doorbell rings) Ooh, there it is.

Grab my door here.

Now, do you remember where we start to read?

That's right, we read on the left and slide to the right and we use our tracker finger, which is our pointer finger right here.

Let's sing our song.

♪ This is the left ♪ (fingers click) ♪ This is the right ♪ (fingers click) ♪ When we read we start at the left and slide to the right ♪ (fingers click) Here we go.

Dear Miss Lara, It is not like you to forget my birthday.

(gasps) Oh no, whose birthday have I forgotten?

Not mine.

I definitely would remember that one.

You always bring me an apple pie and some fresh apple juice on that day.

Who could it be?

You know how much I love apples.

Oh, I know who it is.

Love, Johnny Appleseed.

Have you ever heard of Johnny Appleseed?

He's a man that is known for his love of apples and I bet you Miss Maria brought us a book that's gonna tell us more about him.

So let's grab our book from down here and see what Miss Maria has brought us today.

Oh yes, I know this book well!

"Apples" by Gail Gibbons.

She's the author of the story.

Now you'll remember, the author writes the words.

So we're gonna read this book together and learn about apples.

So here we go.

"Apples" by Gail Gibbons.

Okay, here it goes.

An apple is a fruit.

It grows on an apple tree.

Apple trees grow in more parts of the world than any other fruit tree.

Isn't that amazing?

They have been in existence for about 2 million years.

So look, here's a dog and some family members enjoying some apples.

2 million years, that's a very long time.

The first American colonists brought apple seeds and seedlings with them from England.

A seedling is a very, very small tree.

Many times during the early 1800s, which is a long time ago, John Chapman traveled throughout the wilderness of Ohio, Pennsylvania and Indiana planting apple seeds.

Also, he gave seeds and seedlings to the settlers there.

He became known as Johnny Appleseed.

So here's our Johnny Appleseed who wrote us the letter.

His real name is John Chapman and the funny thing about him that we'll learn later this week is he used to wear a pot on his head.

He really loved sharing apples.

Nowadays, some apples are grown at home and some are grown commercially.

Commercially is a word that means they're grown on big farms to sell in supermarkets and other places.

Each year, about 250 million bushels of apples are grown in the United States and about 28 million bushels are grown in Canada.

Look at that!

That's a lot of apples.

Now, did you know that a group of apple trees is called an apple orchard?

We don't have one where I live but there's one close by that I visited.

An apple is a firm, crisp, fleshy fruit with a hard center called a core.

The core has five seed chambers.

So you can kind of see here, this is what an apple looks like and there's a stem right here.

This is a Macintosh apple.

This is the core, which is the inside of an apple and we'll learn more about that later and here are the seed chambers.

Now, do they look like any shape that you know?

That's right, a star.

There's a star in the middle of an apple.

In the spring time, flowers called apple blossoms begin to bloom on the apple trees.

Each blossom has to be pollinated in order for an apple to grow.

The blossoms are usually pollinated by insects or by the wind.

So look, there's an insect right here, a bee and it's pollinating the flower so more apples can grow.

The leaves capture sunlight, which helps the tree to grow.

After a while, the blossoms begin to die and apples start to grow.

So look, the blossoms are dying and there's a little apple bud growing.

Throughout the warm summer, the little apples grow bigger and bigger and during the late summer or early fall, which is the season that we're in right now, they ripen, which means they grow really big and are ready to eat.

When the trees are loaded with ripe apples, it is harvest time.

Workers pick the apples by hand.

Look at that, all those apples!

We'll read a couple more pages.

Some are shipped to stores, some are used to make apple juice, apple cider, apple jelly.

I've never heard of that, that sounds good.

Apple sauce and lots of other apple products.

Some are sold in baskets at roadsides stands.

Sometimes I see people selling apples on the side of the road where I live.

During the fall, it is fun to go apple picking!

Also, there are county fairs and awards are given to the best looking apple, the best tasting apple pies and the most delicious applesauce.

There's apple cider too.

That would be so much fun to go to.

And this is the last page that we'll read together.

Can you guess what it's about?

What are the children wearing?

Look at that.

During Halloween, there are caramel apples and candy apples and some people bob for apples and we don't do this a lot anymore because you know, it's germy.

But if your family still does that, what they do is they put apples in a big container, fill it with water and then you can't use your hands to get the apples, you have to use your mouth like this.

There's lots more fun things to share in this book.

So if you go check it out at your local library, let me know.

I think it might also be on the Sora app.

Look at all these different kinds of apples.

We'll share more about this book a little later but right now, because we had so much learning in this book, I wanted to do some shared writing with you and I want to talk about all the things that we learned in our book.

So I'm gonna walk over right now.

Will you help me write?

I know what you're thinking.

Miss Lara, I don't know how to write!

That's okay, you're learning.

If you know some of the letters that I write, you can air write them with your magic finger.

You can even dip 'em and paintbrush.

And if you're ready to write, get a piece of paper and a pencil and write with me.

All right.

Here's my big apple.

So what did the book teach us about apples?

Do you remember what apple start as?

That's right, a little tiny seed.

So I'm gonna put a little seed here.

And actually, the book said that there are five seed chambers inside of an apple.

All right, so maybe I'll drop five seeds right here.

Four, five.

Those are inside of an apple, so I'm gonna write seeds, right here.

Do you remember the first sound of seeds?

Sss, that's right, it's an s. S-E-E-D and because there's more than one, I'm gonna add another s, seeds.

They're inside the apple and then they get planted into the ground and they grow into a apple tree, that's right.

Lots of apple trees together are called an apple orchard and I think that's the word I'm gonna write here, orchard.

Now, do you remember in the book, it talked about some people grow apples at home and some people grow them to put in supermarkets so that we can buy them at the store.

So I'm gonna write that word.

Oh, orchard means lots of trees.

Didn't they say there were 250 million something of apples?

I'll have to go back to my book and check but that's a lot of apples.

So seeds, orchard, what else?

What can we make from apples?

That book talked about apple pie.

That's my favorite thing to make and actually tomorrow we're gonna learn about a little girl who traveled the world to make the best apple pie.

It might add a little whipped cream here.

There's my pie.

I'll just add a little bit for some apples right here.

Now let's write the word pie.

What's the beginning sound?

Puh, puh.

That's right, it's P and I bet you there's something that you drink all the time that's made from apples.

You might even get it at a school if you get to go to school.

It's juice, apple juice.

I'm gonna draw that here too.

I might put a little straw and I'm gonna write the word juice.

Special letter, J-U-I-C-E. Then I'll write the word apple, just so we know what kind of juice it is because we know there's all kinds.

What else did we learn about apples?

Well, first, they start off as an apple blossom, don't they?

Before they become a bud, so I'm gonna draw a little apple blossom here.

And actually, I've seen some apple blossoms, not anymore right now where I live but earlier there were tons and they would fall and some would just harden and they turn into buds that would later become apples.

So I'm gonna put right here, blossoms.

B-L-O, blossom.

And more than one makes S, blossoms.

Look at all the things that we learned about apples.

Oh, I almost forgot.

My favorite thing!

I forgot his birthday.

I almost forgot to add him to my board.

Johnny Appleseed!

John Chapman.

He's a person that's known for loving apples.

Now remember I told you, he wore a pot on his head and that was so he can cook his food 'cause he would walk a lot, spreading apple seeds everywhere and sharing.

So he would just sleep, take the pot off his head, cook with it, clean it, put the pot back.

So I'm gonna write his name right here.

Maybe I'll add a little bit of hair.

Johnny Appleseed!

I'm sorry, Johnny.

I almost forgot you again.

Appleseed.

There he is.

I'll put a little heart, so you know that I love you.

There we go.

So we learned so much about apples, so today at our project, we're gonna explore so much more.

We're actually gonna take some apples and measure them and maybe even make volcanoes out of them, so join me there.

How many steps might it take till I get there?

I think I'm gonna do a snail walk.

Maybe six steps?

Here we go.

One, two, snail walk.

Three, four, five, okay, six.

Oh, I got it just right!

Okay, so let's take a look.

I went to the supermarket and I found all kinds of apples.

Now did you know I was with a little girl the other day and she said, "I think that the supermarket grows the apples".

No, apples are grown in farms and then they deliver them to the supermarkets.

But look at all the varieties and different kinds that I found.

I thought we would explore them together.

So, do you notice what color the apples are?

Let's take a look on my magnifying glass.

Ooh, what color is this one?

Red, that's right!

And if I look really closely, you might not be able to see it but there are some dots on this red apple and it has a little bit of white at the end, so it's not all red.

How about this one?

This is a yellow apple, isn't it?

Yellow-green, light green but very different than this one, lighter.

And even different still is this green apple.

Now, if I take a look with my magnifying glass, I can see that there's a spot of the apple that's kind of soft.

This is a bruise of the apple.

Still safe to eat but sometimes it falls from the tree and hits itself and gets a bruise.

Or when it's being packed up for the supermarket, it might get a soft spot, so don't be afraid to eat these.

And let's see, there's still some more I wanted to show you.

This one, this is a different variety.

Look, it's two colors.

It's kind of red and yellow and green.

It has stripes on it.

All different kinds of apples.

Now we're gonna ask some questions about apples that we're gonna answer together.

The very first question I wanna ask is does an apple float?

Hmm, can you make a prediction or a guess about what you think is gonna happen?

Will our apples float?

Let's see, I have some water here.

Let's try an apple.

Oh, I don't know, one with a big stem.

Let's see if it floats.

It does!

I don't know if you can tell, it's kind of magnified there but look, it's not going to the very bottom.

And of course, if I had a larger container, you can see it a little bit more.

So we know the red one doesn't sink.

How about the green one?

Let's try that one.

Floating still!

A little hard to see.

It looks like it's touching the bottom but I promise it's not, it's just it's reflection.

So, apples float.

Okay, I know that about apples.

Well, how much does an apple weigh?

I wonder.

I'm gonna take my balance buckets right here, which is what these are called and I'm gonna put this little guy in one end and then I'm gonna use my cubes here to kind of guess.

So what prediction do you think?

What amount do you think we're gonna add here to make them balance, which means that the apple is gonna come up this much?

I don't know if I have enough cubes.

So right here, let's see, I have one, two, three, four, five, six, more, seven, eight, nine, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15.

Ooh, it's starting to move.

That's one heavy apple.

18, 19, 20.

Let's add some more.

21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, seven, eight, nine, 30.

Let's add 'em 10 at a time.

Skip counting by 10, 20, 30, 40.

Still no.

Let's see, 50.

Did I buy the world's heaviest apple?

60, oh, there it goes!

(laughs) I don't think I'll have room in my buckets.

70, 80, oh, there we are.

Just about.

Oh, I was getting nervous.

Maybe I'll add a few more, just to make sure.

82, that looks just about right.

82 cubes.

Now I want you to try this at home.

You can make a balance bucket using a hanger and some bowls and see what things you can put in to weigh your apple.

I just used cubes today.

Now we're gonna measure our apple, which I'm so excited about and then we'll do our last experiment.

So next, how big and round is an apple?

Let me get my measuring tape.

Now I want to encourage you to explore the fruits and vegetables you have at home, especially apples.

I'd love for you to do a taste test and let me know which apple's your favorite.

The red, the green, the yellow?

I wonder.

This is a measuring tape.

It's a little bit different from a ruler that you might recognize because it's flexible.

That means you can wrap it around things that are round and our apple is round, isn't it?

So I'm gonna start on one end and I'm gonna measure it around.

My prediction is that it's going to be 10 inches long around.

Ooh, I was close.

Look right here, 11 inches.

That's a long way around.

I wonder if all apples are the same.

Let me try this one.

Is it gonna be larger, bigger, smaller, rounder?

Oh, this one's 10 inches.

Shoot, I should have guessed this one.

I would have been right on.

Okay, the last question, which of course we all ask ourselves is can you make volcanoes out of apples?

And the answer is, yes!

We can make a volcano.

So before we do that, let's review what we learned.

All apples are different colors, right?

Some are large and some are small.

One apple that I weighed here weighed 82 cubes and was 11 inches round.

Apples float and now, can they be made into volcanoes?

So let me tell you what you need if you're gonna try this experiment at home.

You're gonna take an apple and hollow it out like this.

You might need a grownup's help.

To make it extra fun, I added some food coloring, which I have here in different colors.

I won't tell you what the colors are until they explode.

You're going to need some baking soda and some vinegar.

All right, vinegar is very smelly, so try not to spill it.

What I'm going to do first to make our apple volcanoes or try to, 'cause I still don't know if it's going to work, so I'm gonna put a spoonful of baking soda in each apple, like this and then I'm going to add my vinegar and that's going to cause a chemical reaction that I want you to investigate.

All right, here we go.

Ooh, smelly, stinky vinegar.

Here we are.

Oh, let's see if it works.

Ooh, there goes our apple volcano!

That's the first one.

Do you notice the color?

It's yellow!

Ooh, look at all those bubbles.

I wonder what color this one's going to be?

Will an apple volcano?

There it goes, that's white and fizzy.

Oh, there it goes a lot.

So, a little tip is to put a pan underneath so it doesn't get all over the table.

Let's try this one.

Oh, there it goes!

Oh, there's the red (laughs).

And this one of course is green.

Oozy, fizzy mess but fun apple volcanoes.

Wow, we learned so much about apples today.

I want you to join me all this week, where we're gonna do more fun things as we explore apples.

We might even make an apple pie on Friday.

Ooh, I'm so excited.

Maybe we'll put some candles in it since we forgot Johnny Appleseed's birthday.

If I remember, I'll bring them.

It looks like we have just enough time to do our alphabet song and we'll say goodbye.

Are you ready?

♪ A, B, see you later ♪ ♪ D, E, F ♪ ♪ G, I'm gonna miss ya ♪ ♪ H, I have to go now ♪ ♪ J, K, bye bye now ♪ ♪ L, M, N, O I had a good time.

♪ ♪ P, Q, R you gonna miss me?

♪ ♪ S, T, U are my best friend ♪ ♪ V, W, ♪ ♪ X, Y, Z ♪ And that means it's time for me to say goodbye and say, I'll Z you tomorrow.

So, remember that we're gonna learn about apples and we're gonna explore and maybe even taste some later.

If you get to go to the library, check out "Apples and Pumpkins", which is my recommended book for this week.

Come back for more fun.

Until then, we'll see you later.

Goodbye, boys and girls.

Goodbye.

(cheerful music)