Preschool Syllabus: Apples

Our first two weeks of homeschooling went well. There were a few bumps in the road - keeping little brother entertained is a challenge - and we didn't come close to getting to all our "special" activities. The Buddy, however, is loving homeschool and I enjoy feeding his hunger for knowledge.

Since we are hoping to make it to an orchard this week, our new theme is apples. 

We checked a ton of apple books from the library but here are 
my favorites: Apples, The Apple Pie Tree, One Red Apple, 
The Seasons of Arnold's Apple Tree,From Seed to Apple, 
Ten Apples Up on Top

I think we are going to start creating fact boards for each of our 
themes. I'm hoping that eventually the Buddy will "write" the 
cards but for today I just wrote down what he said.  He really 
enjoyed "reading" these fact cards to his dad this evening.
Skills Practiced; reading comprehension, vocabulary, connecting meaning to print

Writing Center Additions: apple stickers, letter cards, name cards,
"A" stamp and ink pad
Skills Practiced: fine motor, uppercase and lowercase letter recognition,
 creativity, communication through print, 

 Apple Tree Counting Game: the top of the tree is felt and the
apples are pom poms. The tray with little boxes is a Dollar Tree
find to which I added printed numbers. The Buddy will use the
tweezers to pick the apples from the tree and then place the correct
number of apples in to each box.
Skills Practiced: rational counting, number sense, numeral recognition, fine motor 

Apple Orchard Puzzle
Skills Practiced: fine motor, hand eye coordination, spatial sense, logic

Letter Sort: images for this game were found via Google and
 the board is simply construction paper with stamped letters.
Skills Practiced: letter recognition, sorting, phonetic awareness

These foam blocks were half off in the dollar spot at Target.  
I added the apple stickers. We will use them to 
work on AB and ABC patterning. 
Skills Practiced: rational counting, patterning, sorting 

This book tells the story of an apple tree's life-cycle so I paired it with 
some apple tree life-cycle cards (I didn't make them, I picked them
 up almost five years ago in an early education class).  The Buddy 
will color the cards and then put them in order
Skills Practiced: reading comprehension, sequencing, logic

The Buddy is obsessed with dinosaurs and just learned about
nonstandard measurement so I thought it would be fun to see how 
many apples some of his dinosaurs weigh. I made a little chart with
photos of his dinosaurs and included some apple stickers so he
 could easily document his findings
Skills Practiced: non-standard measurement, rational counting, comparing 

I saw this apple pie play dough idea on Counting Coconuts & 
had to recreate it for my boys. Josiah hasn't had a chance to try it 
out yet because Mini-man played with it for an HOUR this morning! 
Skills Practiced: fine motor, practical life, creativity 

This is an idea I saw on I Can Teach My Child and since the Buddy
loves the book I decided to create our own version.  It's hard to see 
but there is a numbered picture of him in each spice bottle.  The
"apples" are styrofoam balls I painted red. This is where he 
chose to spend most of his time this morning - he thought putting 
apples on his own head was quite amusing. 
Skills Practiced: rational counting, numeral recognition, fine motor,
reading comprehension

I don't know if we will get to them but I also have some ideas for a few apple crafts and the Buddy really wants to try his hand at making applesauce.

P.S. Check out our homeschool page for lots more theme units and educational ideas.