Place a bowl of apples onto your work surface at the front of the room and instruct students to create an abstract art piece by drawing a sketch of the apples. The students may use colored pencils, charcoal or water colors and may draw their interpretation of the bowl of apples instead of an exact representation of them. Encourage the students to be creative with the project and display the art on the class bulletin board.
Students in the fourth-grade class may create a papier-mache representation of an apple as a pencil holder for their desk during the month of September or October. Inflate a small balloon and completely cover with newspaper strips dipped into a one-part flour and one-part water mixture, avoiding covering the balloon knot. Allow the papier-mache to dry, pop the inner balloon with a pin and remove all balloon pieces. Paint the papier-mache with red paint and glue two green felt leaves near the opening.
Research the various types of apples such as Gala, Red Delicious, Granny Smith and Fuji to find the nutritional information. Compile the data and instruct each group of three or four students to graph the amount of dietary fiber contained in each type of apple using a different type of graph to include bar graphs, pie charts and pictographs. Each group of students shares its findings to compare the nutritional information in each type of apple organized in various forms.
Instruct each student in the class to use the apple theme as the center for a piece of writing. Allow the students to choose which type they would like to use including haiku poetry, a journal entry as an apple in its growth or a fictional story about an apple character. Allow for creativity in the writing by not assigning a large number of requirements. Share the stories or poetry with the class as an oral-presentation activity.