How to Make an Apple Pie and See the World Lesson Plan

My turn to teach for our preschool coop. I chose the book "How to Make an Apple Pie and See the World" by Marjorie Priceman. While putting together my lesson plan for the book I had a lot of fun and thought I would share my ideas. This was geared for 4 years olds but could easily be adapted from 3-7 I think. If you have not read the book, you should it is fun and very rich in detail yet still simple and easy for the littlest ones to stick with and follow. As I type this Sirah is flipping through the book pointing at the pictures and telling me her story.

1. Read the story and travel the world all around.
Set up several rooms or locations to represent each area visited in the book. Do this ahead of time with as much or as little detail as you would like.

As you visit each location have the kids collect their item in their own paper bags (suitcases). If you have more realistic items use them, I photocopied pictures from the book for them to place in their brown paper bags.

At the end kids can use photocopies and glue them onto map to show where each item came from.

Below is listed additional ideas for each location. I placed post it notes in the book with the following notes so I had it as I read the book. I can take the note out and glance at it each page I read but the kids dont see the note so they still see the picture. This saves me having to have another sheet I go back and forth between.


Boat Location - practice Italian
Hello - Ciao
Goodbye - Arrivederci
Apple - Mela


Italy
Collect the semolina wheat - an armful
Scoop up an armful

France
Collect the Egg or Chicken
Pretend to chase a chicken to catch

Sri Lanka
Cinnamon From the Bark of the Kurundu Tree
Practice saying Kurundu
Feel bark of a tree
Smell Cinnamon


England
Bring the cow
Talk about the importance of good manners

Boat to Jamaica
Collect Saltwater
Let kids taste saltwater and talk about how our water is fresh not salt

Jamaica
Introduce yourself to each other - have them say hello to two kids next to them and share their names
Practice cutting down the sugar cane

Fly back towards class
Have them flap wings and move toward class
Ask them if they have everything and see if they remember the apples
Change direction and head to Vermont

Vermont
Pick apples - show proper way to pick an apple. Lift up, turn ently against stalk then pull
Have each child pick up eight apples they have them give one to each teacher (chicken and cow) and pretend to eat one themselves. Later teachers can place remaining apples in their bags.

At Home

Act out actions of pie making - talk about them as appropriate

Grind Kurundu to Cinamon
Persuade the Chicken to lay egg
Milk the Cow
Churn the milk to butter
Slice Apples
Mixes the Pie
Bake the Pie

Getting ready to eat the pie, invite friends and all sit at the table awaiting your pie. Help serve if appropriate.

On last page of book trace with your finger along the map (on inside cover of book) the route you took around the world.

3. Eating the Pie
Eat an already made pie or make one if you are at your own home.

4. Bible Leesson - Fruit of the Spirit
While eating the pie talk about bible lesson - Fruit of the Spirit
Hand out Fruit of the Spirit Coloring Page as kids finish eating

Read this story - or a more age appropriate one. I adapted this from one found at DlTK Kids.

Fruit of the Spirit Lesson Plan
Today we talked about one kind of fruit apples. We also talked about many good things that were collected to make this delicious apple pie. All good things come from our God. God also gives us some special gifts that the God calls fruit of the spirit

When we ask Jesus to live in us his Spirit stays with us and He will give us some of this special fruit. As we grow and learn more about Jesus, the Spirit will give
The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self control. All of these fruits are good to have and the Spirit wants to give them to us.

God wants us to try to be good and have the fruit of the spirit in us. We can try to have love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self control but the Spirit will give us the kind of gifts he wants us to have. It's hard to do it on our own, we need the Spirit to help us with each of these things.

IF THEIR ATTENTION IS SHORT STOP HERE _ Otherwise go on to explain the fruits.


Just in case you don't know what each of the fruit of the spirit means I'm going to try to explain them. I think the easiest fruit of the spirit to explain is love. Think of someone that loves you no matter what. You can make mistakes and it doesn't matter what you look like, but they still love you. God loves us too, no matter what, he even loves you more than your parents! He can help us love others the way we should.

The next fruit is joy. Joy is like being very, very happy, it's being happy inside even when things aren't going great. Again, we can try to be joyful but only God can give us the kind of happiness that makes us joyful, we can't just be joyful on our own.

When we think of peace, we usually think of no more fighting. That is right, but the peace of the spirit is a bit different. This is the peace we get when we get to know God really well (by reading the Bible, praying, asking questions, etc). If we have this peace we will feel a calmness inside and know that all our sins are confessed and that God forgives us.

Patience is the next one and I'm sure we know what this means. Have you ever been told to have patience? The patience God is talking about is for those little things like waiting to open your Christmas presents or being patient to go to the park. But it also means to be patient for answers to prayer that might take years to be answered.

Next is kindness and it should be easy although sometimes it's not. Is it easy to be kind to someone who has been mean to? When God gives us this gift, its more than just being kind to others. He might help us be kind to someone who really needs it and we're not even aware of it. For example, maybe you feel like you should write a letter or call a grandparent. God might be urging you to do that because they are having a bad day and that's exactly what they need to cheer them up. Sometimes your kind deed to someone else is all they need to remember that someone special loves them.

Being good or goodness is the next fruit of the spirit. Having the gift of goodness means God can depend on me to be honest, repent of my sins, and turn away from bad things. We also need to try to act this way towards others through our actions so they can see the fruit in us. The only true goodness we have is the goodness of God living in us.

Faithfulness is next and this one might be a little trickier to understand. Being faithful is keeping your promises, being a loyal friend even when times get tough, being trustworthy and doing the things you said you would do. When I think of faithfulness I think of my grandma who prayed for me every single day of her life. She was faithful in praying for me, which also meant that she prayed everyday.
When I think of gentleness I think of holding a brand new baby. For some reason we think they might break if we don't hold them so carefully. The kind of gentleness God is talking about is similar to this. No matter what situation comes up we are supposed to be gentle. That doesn't mean we shouldn't stick up for ourselves, if someone is doing something you know is wrong you should still tell an adult or tell them to stop. Just do it in a gentle way like Jesus would do it.

The last fruit is self control and is a very important one, it means to be in control of what we say and do. Without self control we can't do the things we should. To be able to live the way God wants we have to be in control of the things we do. Just like when a brother or sister bugs you so much you just want to hit them, we know that we have to control ourselves and not hit them. We know we just can't do whatever we feel like sometimes because its not right and we'd be punished.
Just remember that with all these gifts we need help from God to be able to use the gifts properly. We need to remember that God made us and he is perfect. If you want the fruit of the spirit first you need to ask God to live in you, and then the more you get to know him the more fruit or gifts he will help you have.


4. Way Up High in the Apple Tree Song - Music

The Apple Tree - poem
Way up high in the apple tree. (point up)
Two little apples smiled at me. (close thumb & forefinger of each hand to make an apple)
I shook that tree as hard as I could (grab pretend tree & shake)
Down fell the apples (raise hands & let fall)
MMMMMM, were they good! (mimic eating apple)


6. Paint Their Paper Bags With an Apple Tree
Fingerprint Apple or Cherry Tree

Stamp the side of your hand in brown paint and stamp it on the paper as the trunk
Stamp your index finger in green paint and stamp it many times on the paper for the leaves (re-dipping in the paint as necessary)
Stamp your pinkie finger in red paint and stamp it lightly on the paper for the apples (light stamps make rounder prints)


Idea found at DLTK Kids.

6.Apple Cutouts - use from their bags (collected in Vermont)
I used the apple template from Enchanted Learning because it was the size I was looking for many others also available online.

Use Apples for Counting, Subtraction, Addition or Matching (make them different colors for matching).

7. Mapwork
Paste all the little pictures to a world map. Or alternately draw the route you took from country to country on a world map.

Here is the cutouts we used (reduced pictures from the book). The rights to these still belong to the author and publisher of the book. I just am offering what we used for personal use here.



Of course you can also visit an apple orchard sometime. Have fun. I know we will.

Peace,
Tenn