It’s apple picking season once again so I thought I’d share some more fun, hands-on activities you can do with your preschoolers to get them excited about apples. This post includes apple book inspiration, sensory play ideas, and some dramatic play inspiration, including a free download for your apples dramatic play center.
Whenever I am planning a new theme for the playroom, I always start with the children’s literature. I have grown a pretty big personal library over the years, but still scour the library for themed titles as well when there is a particular one that I want. If you’d like to see my full collection of apple books, click the Instagram link below.
There are so many fun apple themed books to choose from, so it’s hard to narrow it down to a few favorites. But I chose four titles to highlight in this post so that you can narrow down your search as well.
Apple Farmer Annie, by Monica Wellington, is a simple story about a farmer, Annie, who prepares her apples and apple products for a market in the city. The illustrations are vibrant and engaging. The text is straightforward and well suited to hold the attention of a preschooler.
Tap the Magic Apple Tree, by Christie Matheson is an interactive book about the cycle of an apple tree through the seasons. The really fun thing about this book is that each page asks the reader to do an action (i.e. tap the book, rub the leaves, blow on the leaves, ect.) and the kids love it! Each page reveals a new development from flower buds, to apples, to falling leaves. This one gets picked up off our shelf over and over.
Ten Apples Up On Top, by Dr. Seuss, is an apple book classic. Of course, the clever rhyme schemes in this story make it fun and silly. Because it follows three animals competing to see who can balance apples on their heads while doing different activities, it also lends itself to counting practice (Another post on counting apples activities soon!).
Ted Red Apples, by Pat Hutchins is also another favorite that tells the story of a farmer whose farm animals keep eating the apples on his apple tree. The story counts down from 10 as each new animal takes an apple. This book has sing-song verse that kids love and lends itself very well to teaching sequence of events as well as counting.
Sensory play is always a must when introducing a new theme. I like to make sensory bins for the playroom and alternate them every week. I also like to KEEP IT SIMPLE. Sensory bins don’t have to cost a fortune to be fun, most teachers and moms are on a budget. I totally get that! I keep several sensory bin bases on hand to use and reuse. Black beans are probably my favorite sensory bin base because I love how they make the other colors pop. I chose black beans for the apple sensory bin because they resemble apple seeds. I added red, green, and yellow pom poms which I already had on hand. The red and green scoops were a free giveaway from another teacher cleaning out her classroom (I will keep them handy for Christmas time too!) and the wooden bowls are from my kitchen. The only thing I purchased were the small foam apples (Amazon) and the cost was well worth it because that was several years ago and I use them all the time.
Play doh trays are another fun way to incorporate sensory play into your apple theme. This apple play doh tray invited my little learners to create apple trees with the materials. I offered green play doh, small sticks, red, yellow, and green buttons, and play doh rollers. The preschoolers got right to it, making a sweet little apple orchard. This activity allowed for conversation about colors, counting, and size comparison.
Dot stickers and butcher paper activities are a favorite here and when you put them together- wow!!! My preschoolers were very excited to decorate the apple trees on this butcher paper. I started by drawing the outline of three large trees. Then I gave them each a sheet of red, yellow and green stickers. I left this open ended, they could decide where to put the stickers. But you could easily make this a color sorting activity by labeling each tree with a certain color. If you draw the trees smaller and label them with numbers, this could become a counting game as well!
When it comes to dramatic play, I like to change out this Melissa and Doug Grocery Stand about every month or so. If you can get ahold of this exact stand, it is the best for small spaces in my opinion! I was able to grab one off of Facebook Marketplace for our playroom and it fits very well in the corner of our playroom. I love how versatile the compartments are in the front. 9 empty bins ready to be transformed! This stand does come with 9 chalkboard labels that hang on the front, but I actually never use those. When it comes to labeling the dramatic play area, there are so many fun and engaging sets out there that you can use. Because we have a small space dedicated to dramatic play, I prefer to just make my own labels using photographs of our actual space. The pictures on each bin label are actual photographs of the bins themselves. This helps preschoolers know exactly how to put things away when it’s time to clean up. Especially because so many components can easily get strewn about!
Our apple stand has lots of apple products for little customers to buy. There’s unopened apple juice bottles, faux apples (from At Home), mini pie tins (Amazon), felt pie crust, and red and green pom poms for the pie filler. The bushel basket is from Michael’s and I honestly wish I would have purchased at least two. The kids absolutely love filling the basket with apples then emptying it again.
If you would like to use the apples banner or any of the apple stand labels for your dramatic play area, you can download them for FREE by clicking the button below. The file is editable, so you can add your own photographs and text onto the labels.
You may also be interested in these apple resources from my shop!
Mrs Mama Bird 