preschool counting – Mrs Mama Bird

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Welcome!! I’m creating this blog post to inspire some apple themed play and learning between you and your preschooler. If you’re looking for some engaging and hands on apple themed ideas, you’re in the right place!! I will use this platform to explain in detail all the elements of my first Apples Teaching Tote – a play based kit that I’ve created for families like you to rent, learn and return. If you are not local to the Mount Airy, MD area, don’t worry! I will describe all the resources available in this bin so that you can find exactly what you need for your preschoolers. Click the photo for a direct link to each item or activity!

Let’s start with the books!

This tote includes seven apple themed books to help immerse your preschooler in the apple season. I’ll explain each one and if you are interested in a direct link, just click the photo!

Mine! By: Candace Fleming

Mine! is a beautifully illustrated story about a juicy red apple that catches the eye of several forest animals. Each animal claims the apple as their own without knowing that the others around them all have the same idea. When the apple falls, a scuffle ensues and a unsuspecting forest friend obtains the juicy treat. This is a wonderful way to start a conversation about sharing and considering the feelings of others, while celebrating the sweet red fruit.

Apples A to Z By: Margaret McNamara

Apples A to Z introduces each letter of the alphabet page by page by describing a word that connects to apples in some way. Vibrant and lively pictures accompany each description. Your preschoolers can learn more about the parts of apples, types of apples, all the things you can create with apples and the process of creating these things. The book is a great choice to accompany any alphabet activity or preparing a yummy apple treat.

Apples, Apples, Apples By: Nance Elizabeth Wallace

Apples, Apples, Apples follows a sweet bunny family to an apple orchard to pick apples for snacks, baking and crafts. The collage style illustrations are absolutely adorable and add dimension to the story. During their visit, the farmer shows them different types of apples, the parts of an apple and how an apple tree grows. The family goes home to have their snack, make applesauce and do an apple craft. An applesauce recipe and directions for the apple craft are included in the story! A eye-catching mix of story and facts, this book is a must have for an apple theme.

Ten Apples Up on Top! By: Dr. Seuss

Ten Apples Up on Top! is a silly story about three animal friends who compete to balance as many apples on their head as they can. Of course, the fun story is written in verse, so it supports important language skills like rhyming words and rhythm. The apple stacks also get bigger as the story progresses so that you can practice counting numbers 1 – 10 with your child throughout the story. This book is a perfect companion to an apple themed counting activity.

The Season’s of Arnold’s Apple Tree By: Gail Gibbons

The Season’s of Arnold’s Apple Tree details the characteristics of Arnold’s Apple Tree throughout the four seasons of the year. As he spends time by his apple tree, he notes the buds in spring, the full leaves in summer, the juicy apples in fall and the bare branches in winter. This book even provides an apple pie recipe and explains how a cider press works. And it’s all through the eyes of a boy who loves to play outside by his apple tree.

Apples By: Gail Gibbons

Speaking of Gail Gibbons, can you even have an apple theme without this book?! Apples is a nonfiction story about the types of apples, Johnny Appleseed, parts of apples, how apples are used and how to grow an apple tree. The details are accompanied by lively and colorful illustrations to draw your child in. Even if you have younger learners who may not be able to attend to all the information, the illustrations are certainly worth sharing to introduce everything apples.

Tap the Magic Tree By Christie Matheson

Tap the Magic Tree is one of my absolute favorite apple stories. It is an interactive journey through a year with the apple tree. Each page invites your child to interact with the story by tapping, shaking or blowing the tree (and more!). You get to see the tree grow buds, flowers, drops its pedals, grow apples, drop it’s leaves and go dormant for the winter. This is also a wonderful way to introduce seasons to your little learners.

Also included in the Apples Teaching Tote are a collection of puzzles, toys, games and activities centered around apples. Read on to see what I’ve chosen for this tote!

We absolutely love the Magnetic Apple Number Maze from Melissa and Doug. It allows your child to use their fine motor skills and dexterity to use the magnetic wand and guide each little apple to the baskets. Each basket is numbered so they have to work carefully, adding just the right amount of apples to each one. This one is also perfect for on-the-go because it is interactive but all the small pieces are contained!

Wiggly Worms is a fun game that explores colors and challenges your memory! The worms wiggle around while you try to find a color that matches your card. You can replay as many times and you want and your child does not need to be able to read to play the game. Wahoo!

Another apple themed toy that I am so excited to include in this Teaching Tote is the Apple Picking Magnetic Tree. This toy is an open ended way to explore apple picking and the apple colors red, yellow and green. Use the small grabbers to strengthen fine motor skills and sort the colors. The base even comes with different size mushrooms that you can sort into their different holes. You can also embed in some number practice while playing with this toy by counting the number of fruit you pick from the tree. Pretend to be a farmer or pretend to be visiting a farm, pick your apples then use them to play!

I will always include sensory activities in a Teaching Tote. This Apple themed Teaching Tote actually includes 2 different sensory activities that you can easily recreate in your classroom or at home learning setting.

Create your own apple bobbing station with a small bin and some foam apples. Using a pair of tongs, your preschooler can transfer the floating apples from inside the bin to outside the bin. Encourage them count as they go. If you don’t have foam apples, you can also use red foam blocks.

This is one of my favorite sensory bins! I created the base by dying dry chickpeas with liquid watercolor paint. Then I added apple mini erasers (linked in photo) and a small grabber. The apple icons are taped to small plastic bowls from the Dollar Tree. These labels can be found the the Apple Fine Motor Activities set from my TpT shop. You can find the link to that at the bottom of this post.

Every Teaching Tote includes hands-on activities to help your preschooler engage in early concepts like visual discrimination, the alphabet, counting, numbers, colors, and shapes. This tote includes 5 learning activities that perfectly accompany the books, games and toys that I’ve shared so far. You can click the photographs for the direct links to each activity. I will also link the icons at the bottom of this post.

Visual discrimination is such an important skill when it comes to identifying, sorting and classifying objects. In this Apple Teaching Tote, you will find a Build and Apple Tree activity designed to help your preschooler strengthen their visual discrimination skills in a hands-on and fun way. It is easy to play! Just set the Build and Apple Tree Mat in front of your preschooler and provide the apple cut outs in reach. Have your preschooler pick a card and build a matching apple tree on the mat. Ask your preschooler- what color apples does your tree have? How many red? How many yellow? How many green? What color has the most? What color has the least? Continue to pick a card and build the different apple trees, letting your preschooler set the pace. Challenge your preschooler to create their own apple tree and tell you about it.

I’ve included 2 learning activities in this teaching tote that are designed to strengthen number sense and counting skills, the Apple Tree Number Sort and the Apple Count and Build Cards. Both of the activities are a part of the Apple Counting Math Centers set available in my TpT.

The Apple Count and Build Cards are a fun and easy way to practice counting 1 – 10 and introduce your preschooler to tens frames, building a foundation for a strong number sense. Simply pick a card, count the apples in the truck and show the quantity in the tens frame. Click the photo to grab the apple mini erasers pictured. Click the photo below to grab the printables.

The Apple Number Sort is a wonderful way to introduce your preschoolers to number forms. The apple cards show numbers 1 – 10 in 5 ways: number, dice, quantity, tens frame and word form. Choose 2-4 numbers to practice and place the corresponding apples in a draw pile. Take turns picking an apple and placing it on the correct tree.

Of course I’ve included some letter practice in this Teaching Tote as well! These alphabet activities will have your preschooler identifying, naming and writing uppercase and lowercase letters. The Apple Find & Clip as well as the Apple Trace the Room are both included in the Apple Alphabet Activities resource in my TpT shop.

I love getting preschoolers excited about learning letters by adding a little movement into the activity. With this Trace the Room, I hid letter tiles (about 3) in small plastic apple containers. Simply set the apple containers around the room and challenge your preschooler to find one, open it, say the letters inside and trace them on their recording sheet. Continue until all the letters are found. Click the photo for a direct link to the apple containers!

Clip activities are such a fun way to practice fine motor skills! With this Apple Find & Clip, have your preschooler find a letter card and clip the matching letter on the Find & Clip Mat. You can choose to practice with uppercase or lowercase letters. Both of these alphabet activities are part of the Apple Activities resource in my TpT. Click the photo to check it out!

I want to end this blog post with an explanation of this adorable apple tree craft that is included in the Apple Teaching Tote. This craft makes an cute hand keepsake and classroom display and it’s super easy to prepare! Just have your preschooler trace their hand on brown paper and draw a tree leaf shape for the leaves (I explained it by saying it looks like a cloud). Glue these pieces to form a tree on a separate sheet of paper. Add apple color dot stickers (red, yellow and/or green) to the tree and Voila! You have a sweet craft to display proudly for your little learner.

I hope this post was helpful to you! If you’re local to the Mount Airy, MD area and you are interested in renting all of these fun items, please click the Teaching Totes icon to visit my Teaching Totes website and contact me for booking!

If you would like more information about the learning activities featured in this blog post, click the icons below! Happy playing!!

Looking for a counting activity for fall or Halloween?? Stop here! After our pumpkin investigation last week, I washed and dried all the pumpkin seeds with the intention of making this counting game. I formatted the pumpkins with traceable numbers, got it all set up, and decided I didn’t like it!! So, I got back on my computer, tweaked the recording sheet a bit, and got it ready for you as fast as I could.

Now the recording sheet includes a tens frame so that kids can keep their pumpkin seeds organized as they count. This helped my now five year old, Emmett, so much. I slipped the recording sheet into a wipe clean sleeve, but you can print and copy if you prefer. I counted out pumpkin seeds ahead of time and put them in these adorable plastic jack-o-lanterns from Target. You could also use orange Easter eggs or even plastic bags to hold your manipulatives.

I chose to give Emmett the 1 – 20 version of the game. He was able to lay the seeds out in the tens frames correctly. He even was able to recognize that when the seeds filled up one tens frame, he could count up from ten to find out the total count. This could be extended into introducing the concept that teen numbers are always equal to 10 plus a number. We didn’t go there this time, but maybe next time!

I designed three different variations of the counting game for you. The first one is 1 – 10, the second one is 11 – 20 and the third one is 1 – 20. Each variation comes with traceable numbers in the pumpkins or blank pumpkins. This allows you to decide if you want your preschoolers or kindergarteners to compose the numbers on their own or with guidance. You can download the file by clicking on the button below.

click here to download

If you’re interested in pairing this activity with a book, Five Little Pumpkins is an obvious choice. Emmett loves Pete the Cat so he chose that version to read.

Of course, I wanted storyboard elements to go along with the rhyme, so I scoured the internet for a resource that matched what I had in mind. Luckily, I found another talented educator that had already created exactly what I was looking for. AND she was offering it for free on her blog, Primary Playground. Perfect!

You can snag your own set HERE. There’s also a color and cut activity available too if you’re interested!

I used this Grid Game to reinforce Emmett’s counting skills. He was able to do this independently while I worked with his older brother for a little while. This came from Prekinders and you can find it HERE. This is a website I often go to first when I am planning a new theme or skill. I love Karen’s style!

I hope your preschoolers and kindergarteners enjoy counting with the help of these fun activities! If you decide to share on Instagram, don’t forget to tag me @mrsmamabird and include my hashtag #learnwithmrsmamabird. Thank you!!