We have about two weeks left at school here in my district. Although I’m looking forward to a nice, relaxing summer, my mind is already in beginning of the year mode. One of the themes that I love to incorporate during the first few weeks of school are preschool apple activities.
Apple Activities
There are so many fun apple activities to do that are highly engaging and a whole lot of fun! I’m sure you’d love to see a sneak peak on what kind of goodies we will be getting into this upcoming fall, so here’s my apple themed lesson plan.
Apple Math Activities
Do you have any fun apple math activities in store for your kiddos? If not, here are a few ideas to get your gears going.
In this apple math activity, your kids will practice making ten with a fun dump and count activity. If you have the two sided yellow and red counters you can use those OR you can use the included apples. I think the apples add an extra bit of fun to the activity, so I’ll definitely be using them. Stick the counters or apples into a cup and shake them out onto the tree.
Your students will check to see how many apples are yellow and red. They then can record their answer on the provided worksheet. If you have some advanced mathematician, a good small group activity could be to teach them how to create an equation out of this.
On the other hand, you may have most of your kids needing to work with a smaller number. This activity also comes with a make five worksheet that’s perfect for introducing this to beginner mathematicians.
Subitizing is another preschool math activity that should be introduced as early in the year as possible. Subitizing is just a big word that means a person can identify how many objects they see without having to count. To help you out with this, I’ve created a fun preschool math activity and worksheet to go along with our preschool apple activities. This would be perfect to be thrown in a center.
Your students will love choosing an apple seed card and subitizing how many seeds are inside the apple. They will then work on number recognition by finding the number on the tree and covering it with a seed or pom pom. This also includes a worksheet where students will draw a line from the number to the picture with the correct number of seeds.
How adorable are these apple themed number mats? I love how these incorporate so many skills such as handwriting, reading, number recognition, ten frames, and fine motor. This activity is a total winner AND is free for all of my Email subscribers! Grab your free copy below.
Preschool Reading Activities
The reading specialist in me has a huge soft spot for teaching literacy, ESPECIALLY beginning reading skills. Each of my weekly themes has at least 5 literacy activities to complete for the week, so these preschool apple activities had to follow suit as well. 🙂
Phonemic awareness is an essential skill for little learners to master. In this activity students will say the object in the picture, clap the syllables, and lay it on the correct syllable tree. This also comes with a cut and paste worksheet to strengthen their fine motor skills while practicing syllables.
In this beginning sounds activity, students will say the words on each apple, identify their initial sounds, and cover them with their matching letter. If you don’t have magnetic letters, I’ve included a set of letters in these preschool apple activities to use.
Fine motor skills are essential for children to master so they can strengthen their hand muscles and do real life activities such as write, button their shirts, and zip their pants! This apple activity can be used in so many different ways to teach several skills in one sitting! Plus it ties in academics! Yay for differentiation! I love how this can include handwriting, pincer grip work, play doh rolling, and letter recognition.
Here, we traced the letters with a dry erase marker and also added “apple seeds” to build each letter! You could also build the letters with pom poms, mini erasers, play doh etc. Another fun variation to this is to trace the letters in apple sauce!
I created an apple out of a red paper plate and construction paper. Super high tech, I know! HA! We first built the letters using mini apple erasers and then used our fingers to trace the letters! I love how this doubles as an apple themed snack once you’re done too! 🙂
Preschool Science Activities
On top of all of the fun academic activities you can complete this week, you can also do quite a few preschool science activities. Each year we always talk about an apples life cycle and how it has to go through a process to turn into the fruit that we buy at grocery stores.
In these preschool apple activities, I’ve included an anchor chart that can be displayed to show the life cycle as well as a copy that can be glued into a science journal. This also includes fun life cycle cards that can be connected with Link-N-Learns as a chain or glued on a ribbon. I’ve also used this as a fun memory activity!
Here’s another preschool science activity your students will love! When I teach this, I always give my students mini sticky notes so they can label their own apple as I label a large anchor chart. This worksheet is a great reinforcement to use after you’ve taught the parts of an apple during your apple themed week.
More Preschool Activities
After you label the parts of an apple another fun apple activity would be to paint with the slices! This one is SUPER simple and can be done for next to nothing in the beginning of the school year.
All you need is red, yellow, and green paint, paper, and 2.5 apples cut in half. You could save money and make several slices in one apple to share between your kids, but I found that the size after cutting the apples in half is a lot easier for little hands to hold and work with than smaller slices.
Simply slice each apple in half, dip one half in each color paint, and create your scene! (You could also use an apple sponge if you don’t want to waste food!) I love when activities can be basically free and a whole lot of fun. Will you be doing this activity with your little learners?
To see what else is included with these preschool apple activities, head to my shop and check out more pictures and details. If you’re needing more weekly themed activities, you won’t want to miss out on these fun preschool themed lessons:
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