Rinn Reflections: Preschool at Home: Apples

Friday, September 20, 2013

Preschool at Home: Apples

It's fall--my absolute favorite time of the year! Today, I am excited to link up with Tot School Gathering Place to share some of our fall activities from the past two weeks.

My little ones made hand and fingerprint apple trees (idea from Learn~Play~Imagine). I have been trying to involve Emma in more of our "school time"--I think you can tell by her smile that she likes it! She glued, painted, and tasted paint. :)

Isaac loves doing projects, especially anything involving paint! It has been neat to see his ability to concentrate grow as he gets older. I love how focused he is in the above pictures.

Little Emma has quite the red lips in this picture! :)

The finished trees are darling! If you read our blog long enough, you'll find that I love any craft or project involving hands/handprints!

With Isaac, I've been focusing on number recognition and pre-math activities. Isaac and his sweet friend, Landrie, cut their own tree trunks out of brown paper. Then, they glued the green leaves to the branches and added "apples" (red poms) to each tree. We counted (and counted and counted) the apples on each tree.

Throughout this week, I've practiced beginning addition & subtraction with Isaac. I'll give Isaac two apples while holding two apples and ask, "If you have two apples and I have two apples, how many do we have all together?" Being able to touch and see the apples helps him a lot. He likes the subtraction questions better (probably because they involve a storm!). For example, "If you have four apples on your tree and a giant gust of wind blows two off of the tree, how many apples are left on the tree?"

I got this idea for a foam apple tree in the bath from the fall number bath on Momma's Fun World.

I sang the following lyrics to the tune of "Are You Sleeping?"

Picking apples, picking apples

off the tree, off the tree

Pick the number ___, pick the number ___

and give it to me, give it to me.

Isaac thought this was so much fun! He sang right along with me, too.

Of course, Emma was right beside her big brother the entire time. She picked the apples off as quickly as she could!

I think we've reserved every fall/apple book in the entire Fort Worth library system.

Here are our favorite apple books:

The Apple Pie Tree

I think this book is excellent. It starts in the winter when the tree's branches are bare and then shows what the apple tree looks like in each season.

I Know It's Autumn