A great sensory and art activity was painting with apples. Surprisingly she didn't try to eat them.
I made a lacing card from this amazing link. I had to help her at first, but she really got the hang of it. I was impressed at how quickly she picked it up. Now don't think each hole was perfectly laced. It was all over the place, but she had fun going from hole to hole. Between each hole she would get up and dance with it while I sang one of her favorite apple songs from the week. It was pretty cute.
I also found an apple life cycle chart. Not 100% sure if we did it right. I couldn't decide if the tree should come before the bud. Since it already had apples on it we put it fourth. Hopefully I'm not already screwing her up!
I found some little fake apples at Walmart for our sensory bin. To get some good use out of them we used them as a counting activity too.
For a little field trip we went to Gordon's Orchard. I called ahead and the owner said he would give her a little tour. I wish she could have seen more of the trees, but she did get to see how they package their apples and how they make cider. I think her favorite part was the cat.
I turned this free apple life cycle printable into a ring book. We would get it out in our circle time and then keep it on her science shelf.
Another art activity we did was tearing paper and gluing. I tore a little brown strip to make a stem.
We did a matching game. She definitely needed help with this. Towards the end she was catching on.
We did another play dough mat with counting. After we did up to four apples she wanted to roll snakes again. We made three, and she had fun counting out her three snakes.
In our sensory bin this week I used the fake apples, cinnamon sticks, and quick oats. I've saved some of Natalie's formula scoops and then a little scooper we have and put them in there.
Natalie also enjoyed the sensory bin!
Something new for the last day was this little giraffe puppet. I wanted a little classroom helper for discussions and circle time. I used it to sing the songs out of the song binder. Molly loved it and quickly took over. She flipped through the pages and then started singing "apple tree, apple tree," over and over again. It's awesome when they initiate something in a way that shows they are absorbing what you are talking about.
Natalie enjoyed music time also!
Then we did a coloring sheet where you had to color each apple a certain color. Her favorite part was when Jesse the giraffe picked up a crayon in his mouth and started to help. She colored the rest of the picture with her mouth.
We got this awesome sequencing game from Melissa and Doug this week. It comes with a lot of options, but we stuck with the more Fall based ones.
Since the week was apples I thought it would be a good idea to talk about the letter A too. We had an A hanging up on the circle time wall and then we decorated this A today.
I made a little apple counting game for her to play. She really loved it.
Some books we read this week were her new Explore Fall With Dora book from the $1 aisle at Target. A book we own called Seasons. A library book called Autumn.
Her favorite song this week was:
4 little 5 little 6 little apples,
7 little 8 little 9 little apples, on my apple tree. Munch little, munch little, munch little apples
Crunch little, crunch little, crunch little apples
Bunch of little, bunch of little, bunch of little apples,
Good for you and me!
Oooooooh you've got great ideas (love the photos too :) )
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