Sorting Sprinkles: Apple Week for Preschoolers

Apple Week has now come an end in our homeschool-preschool and here is a last look at what we had a chance to do during this activity-filled week.

Outdoor Play - Language & Literacy -

Applesauce ingredients hunt and quiz in the backyard

A well loved activity by Adrian this week was this applesauce ingredients hunting. I hid all four apples in the yard with 1 envelope for each and did the same with the wooden spoon. Adrian had to find the envelopes in order (1-5) and answer the question within the envelope correctly before being allowed to add the applesauce ingredient to his cooking pot. The more good answers, the more applesauce he would make...and eat! :) Questions were as follows:

1. True or False: Apples are vegetables.

2. Can you name 3 different color of apples?

3. True or False: Apples grow on trees.

4. Apples have a stone in their core.

5. Can you name 2 apple products? / 2 things we can make with apples?

Science - Culinary Arts - Making applesauce

Making applesauce is frankly easy when you've made so much of it for your babies. :) Adrian and I ended up using 2 Golden Delicious and one Gala apple. I like to use a variety of apples and only sweet ones as I do not add sugar at all. Adrian took the stickers off the apples, washed them and I then peeled and cored the fruit while he...ate the peelings. :) Once I finished dicing the apples, he put them in the pot, we added about an inch of water to the bottom of the pot and started cooking them. Adrian stirred and we tested with a fork several times until the apples felt tender, at which point, we transferred the apples to the mini food prep for pureeing. Unfortunately, it broke in the midst of the pureeing so the applesauce was a bit chunkier than we like it (can't blame it for breaking after all those years of baby food making). It still tasted great but the texture was a bit off to our palate. ;)

Art - Apple printmaking

Well believe it or not, it was the first time I cut an apple sideways in front of Adrian and he looked so surprised to see a star in the middle of its core! It was like I did magic. So we took the magic to the paper by dipping one half in red paint and the other in green paint (paint was previously poured in two small plates). The trick is to not saturate the apple, otherwise, you don't see the star pattern so much. I really liked the result and would eventually like to take this activity to a blank canvas bag. It'd look so neat for an apple orchard visit.

Math - Patterning with apple cut-outs

Ordered these through an Ebay seller last year. I figured it was cheaper than buying the colored card stock and punch and I was right. These were $0.99 and $0.50 for shipping. I used them for patterning this year. What you see above is the completed pattern (Adrian added the last apple to my sequence). He did great and loves doing patterns like these (probably because he's so good at it!).

Roll an apple

Here comes the Tadoodles! Yes, I still have these from Adrian's toddler years and yes, they still work just fine! I put fall color ones on the Tadoodle car and brought these out with a die and Apple Picking Time sheet (see Engaging Toddler Activities for your own). I originally had planned on using a red bingo stamper but it has been misplaced during our overseas move and I have had little time to hunt for it. No biggie as Adrian loved seeing the Tadoodles again! :) So to fill in this sheet with dots, Adrian rolled the die and dotted as many circles as the die indicated. He loved alternating colors in between die roll. (idea for this activity was originally taken from somewhere. My Montessori Journey maybe?).

Fine Motor - Apple Tweezing

Well, these are only mini red pompoms but pretending is fun! We used a pair of toast tongs for this activity. Real tweezers would have been a big small and real tongs, a bit too big. These were perfect and Adrian completed the tweezing with no difficulty and in no time.

Science - Parts of an Apple

We first took a look at the poster and then proceeded to color carefully in our booklet. I found the poster on the University of Illinois's website and the apple for coloring at Color Me Good. (I had to add the leaf though).

Art - Play dough Apples

Aren't these the cutest little apples? With some red play dough, a broken twig and tiny leaves leftover from our bush trimming, you get these adorable creations. Last year, we used cut up aquatic plant leaves for the leaves and it worked much better as they were sturdier but I could not find them in time for this year. Real leaves were a bit difficult to get in the dough as they keep bending but on the other hand, gathering the twig pieces and leaves added to the fun for Adrian. (Idea found on My Montessori Journey)

Language & Literacy - Ten Red Apples by Pat Hutchins Story Acting

Another activity found on My Montessori Journey. This book had never appealed to me or Adrian when we borrowed it from our local library but I gave the activity a shot anyway and with the props, the book was now loved and cherished to the point where it became part of our own library. Basically, a different farm animal takes an apple on each page spread so I made sure we had the ten animals and farmer (card could be used as they were on MMJ)) and ten apples (apple pattern found on MMJ). Adrian would then make the animal take an apple and set it aside until all the apples were gone. He made sure several times that the amount of apples in the tree matched the ones in our crate.