Apples

September is the perfect time to begin alphabet learning with the letter A!  Apples are in season and a very popular pre-school theme.  Here are a few of the apple activities we have done.  

Art

Apple Prints:  Cut your apple in half, stamp it in paint and create a apple collage.  We used red, green and yellow apples cut in half and stamped them in the coordinating colors.   Don’t forget to talk about the parts of the apple:  stem, core, seeds, etc.  What shape is inside?  One of my daughters said star and one said flower.  This is a good time to talk about the concepts half and whole. 

Apple Trees with paper towel rolls and bingo dobbers.  This was fun even for my first grader friend who comes over in the morning.  I had them rip the paper to make the tree and stamp the rolls in red or green paint and use bingo dobbers for the yellow apples.  Who needs paint brushes?   

Fine Motor

Apple Jack Necklace:  Give your children a bowl full of apple jacks, yarn, and let them string them on a necklace.  It’s great for fine motor/eye hand coordination and the best part is they can eat them when they are done!  You can do sequencing with them, too!  It’s a good reinforcer for speech practice… say some words… get an apple jack! 

Pre-Academic

Play Dough Apple Trees:  Print out apple trees and cover them in contact paper and you have apple tree mats perfect for play dough.  You could also use pom poms.  I’m sorry I don’t remember where I found these apple tree templates but they would be easy to make with a graphics program.  The basket next to the apple tree has a number and the child needs to roll apples out of play dough and put the correct number of apples in each tree.  You can talk about language concepts full, empty, more, less, how many.    

“Field Trip”

Apple Picking:  One of my absolute FAVORITE things to do with my family is go Apple Picking!  We haven’t gone this year yet but here are some of my favorite pictures from previous years.  Seriously… where has the time gone?