Your preschool and kindergarten-aged children will love learning all about apples. These apple-themed activities are perfect for back to school and the fall. Use these preschool apple unit activities in a traditional school or homeschool setting!
Do you want all the activities in this blog post? Check out the Apple unit here.
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Read About Apples
We read 5 books about apples for our preschool apple unit. For each of the books, we did 5 reading lessons, one for each day of the week.
We began our preschool apple unit by reading the book Apple, Apples, Apples by Nancy Elizabeth Wallace. For this book, we focused on vocabulary. We talked about the vocabulary words, cut them out, and placed them in the correct location of the diagram.
I used our second book to discuss concepts of print. We talked about important things the book tells us—for example, the title, author, illustrator, etc. Then we read one of my childhood favorite series Amelia Bedelia’s First Apple Pie by Herman Parish.
For our next reading activity, we focused on making predictions. I showed the kids the cover of Apples and Pumpkins by Anne Rockwell and asked what they thought the book would be about. We took a picture walk through the book, read the title, and then I asked if their predictions changed. Next, we read the book and discussed whether their predictions were correct or incorrect and what context clues we used to base our predictions on.
We talked about prior knowledge and filled out a KWL about apples. The kids drew a picture or wrote about things that they knew about apples and wanted to know about apples. Then we read the book Apple, Apples Everywhere! by Robin Koontz. After reading we wrote down or drew facts about apples or things we learned about them.
The final reading activity for our preschool apple unit was an “A” alphabet emergent reader. The kids read the words on the page and pointed to each word as they read.
Preschool Apple Themed Literacy Activities
The first preschool apple unit literacy activity that we did was letter writing. The kids used cinnamon sticks to write upper and lower-case letters in oatmeal. This was a fun multisensory activity!
You can use any type of tray for the letter writing. They have these really nice ones on Amazon. I grabbed full cinnamon sticks from the grocery store and store-brand rolled oats.
The next literacy activity focused on letter recognition and matching. We were focusing on matching our upper case letters to lower case letters. I had the students say the letter name aloud and find the match.
One of my favorite activities in this preschool apple unit was our name craft. The kids cut out the apple basket and got enough apples to spell out their names. On each apple, they wrote a letter of their name and glued it onto the apple basket. This craft makes a cute bulletin board.
Next, we did a color and letter match. The kids picked up a letter card. They found the letter on their worksheet and colored it in the same color as the card. This focuses on upper and lower case letter matching as well as color matching.
Our final literacy activity was apple rhyming puzzles. There are 8 puzzles in total with two rhyming words per puzzle. My kids had a lot of fun doing these. I had them say the word family aloud first and then say the words on the picture cards aloud to complete the puzzles.
Math Apple Activities
We began our preschool apple unit math with our apple counting clip cards. The students needed to count the number of apples on the tree and clip the matching number on the cards. The numbers 0-10 are included.
Our next activity was a fine motor tracing activity. We traced from the apples to the apple baskets while keeping on the dotted line. I like to put these into tracing pockets so they can be used again and again.
We returned to numbers with our ten frames. I laminated these to allow the kids to trace directly onto the card. They traced each number. Next, they count out some counters and place them into the ten frames. Finally, we used red circle counters and counted those out to act as apples for the trees.
We worked on patterns for our next math activity. We cut out and pasted to complete the patterns on this apple-themed worksheet.
Our final math activity was apple dough counting mats. The kids created “apple” dough balls for each number card. The numbers 1-10 are included.
Sensory, Science, and Social Apple-Themed Activities
Our sensory bin for the week was simple and really fun. The base of the sensory bin is uncooked rolled oats. I placed green circular beads to represent apples, and cinnamon sticks to interact with, and to add a scent. Finally, I added some kids tweezers for the kids to play in the bin.
The next activity we completed was apple suncatchers. These are perfect to hang on windows and brighten up the classroom. It is great for fine motor skills. The kids have to pick up tissue paper bits one piece at a time and place them into the center of the apple.
Ripped paper art is a fun and creative project. The kids picked a base color for their project and ripped up brown paper for the trunk, green paper for the leaves, and red paper for the apples. They glued these pieces onto the paper in the shape of an apple tree.
We explored buoyancy with our mini science lab. Will apples sink or float? The kids made predictions as to whether the apples would sink or float. You could take some data and make a class graph.
The final activity for our preschool apple unit was learning about the life cycle of an apple. We completed a cut-and-paste activity with 4 phases of the life cycle of an apple. This was a nice tie-in of all we learned throughout this unit.
We had a busy week filled with so many apple-themed activities for preschool. This was a fun unit and perfect for the fall. Don’t forget to grab the apple unit here if you loved all these activities!
