Have you every wondered what Johnny Appleseed carries in his knapsack? Well, my students have and their opinions are priceless! Our apple-fest continues and today I’ll show you some fun things to do while learning about Johnny Appleseed.
A few years ago, on Sept. 26th, Johnny Appleseed’s birthday, after reading aloud a book about John Chapman to my class, we were discussing some vocabulary I had pulled from the text. One of those words was knapsack. I suspected that most of my students didn’t know what a knapsack was. As I pointed out a knapsack in several illustrations and explained what a knapsack is, one of my little friends asked, “What’s inside Johnny’s Appleseed’s knapsack? What does he have in there?”
I thought it would be fun to get everyone’s opinion so………I did this Johnny Appleseed minilesson with our Kindergarten and first graders this year and their responses were priceless! You have to love the friend who says, “Johnny has a phone in his knapsack so he can find Pokemon.”! Afterwards, we made these knapsack crafts and my friends wrote about things they thought Johnny would have in his knapsack.
One of my sweet teacher friends sent me this picture of her class brainstorming things Johnny might have in his knapsack and explaining why. You can find the prewriting page and several minilessons in my shop.
She recorded some of their responses on sticky notes and added them to the class chart.
Then added a smaller sticky with the reasons why. (She reported that making the chart was a snap, with all the included chart parts and titles!)
My second graders made a different version of the craft.
After reading lots of books about Johnny Appleseed we wrote mini-biographies inside our Who Was Johnny Appleseed? knapsack booklets.
If you’ve previously purchased this resource be sure to redownload to get the add-ons! Stay tuned for some fun ideas for incorporating apples into your grammar and word study!
I love the Johnny Apple seed information and wonderful pictures . What a wonderful
unit of study.