Read a few Johnny Appleseed stories to your children. These tales are readily available from libraries and online resources. Pick key words from the stories to have your kindergarten kids copy. Some examples of words to use are apple, seeds, hero, pioneer, plant, grow and tree. This writing activity gives young learners a chance to practice handwriting and word recognition.
Take your story words a step further by combining an art and writing activity the children will enjoy. Instruct your students to pick three words from the story to create a picture. The students can use three of the words they were introduced to previously or can recall new words from the story to explore. Encourage your students to create a meaningful picture in which they will label key elements. For instance, a student might pick apple, seeds and a new word, travel. His picture may be one of Johnny Appleseed following a road dropping apple seeds as he progresses.
Place students into groups in which you give them cards with pictures from the story along with another set of flash cards that has words from the story. Instruct the group to match the words to the pictures in the first step of this word recognition game. Once, the groups have made their matches, challenge them to order the cards and the corresponding pictures in a logical way so that they have "written" the basic story of "Johnny Appleseed."
Form new student groups and give them a small amount of apple seeds. Provide each group with a very simple map of the United States. Guide the children in placing apple seeds on the states through which Johnny Appleseed traveled. Set his home state of Massachusetts as the starting point. A final map will have seeds placed on Ohio, Indiana, Illinois and Pennsylvania. Have students practice writing the names of the five states to increase letter forming ability and word recognition.
Give your students five minutes to write down as many foods and beverages made from apples as they can recall. Ask them to phonetically spell the words by sounding them out in their heads. Kindergarten Lessons website says to encourage your young writers to take risks with the work and not worry about making mistakes. Ask students to share items from the lists following the five minute work time. Instruct them to add new words to the papers as you end the lesson. A sample list might include apple sauce, cider, apple pie, apple jelly, candy apples, apple dumplings, baked apples, apple juice and apple spice cake.