Apple Index

Sample pictures from the Apple Index below.

       Apple, a fruit that many authorities consider the most valuable of any cultivated by mankind. It is by far the most generally cultivated of any grown in the temperate regions, and it is also one of the most appreciated. The person who does not enjoy eating apples is a rarity. The tree which bears this popular fruit belongs to the rose family. It can be grown in Norway and other countries as far north as 65 degrees north. The blossoms are very susceptible to injury from frost, but they appear mush later then peach or apricot blossoms and so avoid the late frost which would be fatal to fruit bearing. Apple trees reach a moderate height and have spreading branches. The leaves are nearly oval, and the pinkish-white flowers are produced from very short shoots or spurs, which are usually of two years' growth.

Apple Artifacts & Art for Enhancing Lesson Plans:

1. DIY Apple Card Games for Early Learners - It's time for apple season and the fun games and activities teachers share in the classroom.
2. "Apple of My Eye" Valentines - Apple themes for Valentine's Day Fun!
3. Print and Play An Apple Themed Color Sort Game - Young children can learn their colors: yellow, green and red by sorting apples.
4. Stringing Beads at The Early Leaning Center - Start preschool small motor coordination by stringing beads.
5. Scrumdiddlyumtious Apple Quince Treats and Recipes! - Moms and Dads can bake apple recipes in the kitchen with their kids to celebrate Fall.
6. "A" was once a counting apple pie too! - Kids can craft an apple pie pocket and insert paper apples while counting them.
7. Craft a Half-Eaten Home! - fun with cotton balls, pom-poms and paper plates
8. All 'descendants' of Johnny Appleseed - How to make dolls from dried, carved apples.
9. Links to More Than 100 Apple Crafts!
10. Craft an Apple Lacing Card from A Paper Plate - make your own lacing, paper plates for little students
11. String a Wormy Apple Craft - A fun craft to develop small motor skills and well, eating to be honest.
12. "Oats and Wild Apples," by Frank Asch - Preschool through 2nd graders will love this book for Fall.
13. "Ten Red Apples," by Pat Hutchins - counting book for kindergarten
14. Johnny Appleseed Praise and Worship - old-fashioned theme for Fall
15. Who was Johnny Appleseed? - Do you know Johnny Appleseed was a real person? He was also a missionary...
16. The "Act" of Tearing Develops Small Muscles - tearing idea along with pattern links
17. Around The Apple Tub - people and animals still play this game?
18. Old Apple Recipes - recipes over 100 years ago
19. Template of Apples On A Branch - free, drawn pattern for teachers and students
20. Apple Math Game for Bulletin Boards  - explanation and template
21. Cut, color and assemble sweet Adam and Annie Apple paper dolls... - These paper dolls come with free patterns.
    

Apple Themed Poems:

1. A Summer Snowstorm! ". . . all our pretty orchard grass, is hidden out of sight.''
2. Little Apple Rhymes and Poems - '' I plucked pink blossoms from mine apple-tree...''
3. The Apple Rhyme - "In my garden grows a tree''
4. The Planting Of The Apple Tree  - ''Come, let us plant the apple-tree!"
5. Apple Time - multiple short rhymes
6. At Apple-Pickin' Time - ''When a frosty carpet sparkles in the hollow...''
7. The Cider Mill - I can hear your music still, creaking, creaking...''

Kindergarten & Preschool Index

Sample pictures of artifacts listed below.

       Kindergarten, a word meaning child garden, is applied to a special kind of school for small children. The first kindergarten was established by Friederich Frobel in 1840, and schools modeled on his are now common in both European countries and American States. Interest in the education of young children is not of recent origin, however, the vivid interest of child life and the responsive quality of childhood has always made their training possess much possibility among many nations of the earth. The Greeks, for example, planned for definite care of children under seven and their  Roman predecessors invented methods of instruction which should tempt any little beginners into paths of learning. After the establishment of Church schools throughout Christendom, children became proficient in even wider studies early in life.

1. Early Childhood Education
2. Power to Explore
3. What Is Play?
4. Getting Ready to Read
5. The Means & Ways of Occupation In The Kindergarten
6. About Bloodborne Pathogens

Teaching Aids and Centers:

1. Play-Doh Mats for Early Learners
2. The Building Block Center
3. Working With Pattern Blocks
4. Trace, Cut and Paste Developmental Leaning Activities
5. Name Recognition Encourages Early Reading
6. B is For Button and Also CORE
7. Four Easy Ways to Develop Small Motor Skills in Early Learners
8. Develop Small Motor Muscles with Clothespins and Paper Plates
9. Use a Light Table to Teach About Colors and Shapes
10. How to arrange objects according to size?
11. Eating Should Be a Happy, Healthy Experience!
12. Counting Monsters for Fun!
13. Pinchers Not Grippers!
14. Developing a Seating Chart for A Rug
15. Stringing Beads at The Early Learning Center
16. Illustrated Poetry For Young Children
17. DIY Apple Card Games for Early Learners 
18. Handwashing Must Be Taught in Preschool
19. Ed Emberley's Children's Books
20. The "Act" of Tearing Develops Small Muscles 

Kindergarten Crafts:

1. "Chicka, Chicka, Boom, Boom" in My Classroom 
2. Paint, Cut and Paste Your Own Bumpy Little Pumpkins 
3. Craft a Half-Eaten Home! 
4. Wad, Wrap and Tape A Fall Pumpkin Craft 
5. Craft your very own butterfly kite! - two patterns 
6. Craft a Little Valentine Garden 
7. How to Make "Pumpkin Spice" or "Pumpkin Pie" Playdough  
8. Sunflower Craft Using Beans and Hands 
9. Craft an Apple Lacing Card from a Paper Plate  
10. Paint Fall Foliage With Hugs and Kisses - x's and o's 
11. "Spooky" Tree Watercolor Painting 
12. Pumpkin and Jack-O-Lantern Number Books 
13. Craft Three Age Appropriate Clover Mosaics for St. Patrick's Day 
14. Craft a Fall Landscape Using Leaf Rubbings 
15. Cut & Paste Popped Corn On the Cob 
16. A Fall Leaf Craft for Two and Three Year Olds 
17. Tear and Paste Falling Leaves 
18. String a Wormy Apple Craft  

Poems About School:

• Off To School
  

Stories For Kindergarten Lessons:

1. Mary had a Little Lamb
2. Coming and Going
3. Tom the Water-Baby
4. Story of a Mouse
5. Lessons: Pumpkin Soup  
6. Lessons: The Lorax

More Articles About Early Learning from Art Education Daily:

1. The "Elements Of Art" Is Kindergarten Material
2. Introducing Preschoolers to Play Dough 

DIY Apple Card Games for Early Learners

Alphabet Apple Cards made from die cuts.

The alphabet apple cards, just right, are made from die cut apples and precut alphabet letters.

Alphabet Apple Card Questions:

• Spell out simple sight words like: GO, MY, ME, AT, TO, BE, NO, YES
• Put the alphabet cards in order and recite the letters out loud.
• Find a specific letter or remove a specific letter.
• Identify the vowel letters?
• Which letter is at the beginning of your name?
• Pick out a letter and make it's sound. 
• How many letters are in the alphabet? Count them to find out.

The Seriation Apple Cards: are cut from red construction paper and shaded with crayons or colored pencils. Young students can line these apples up, starting with the smallest apple and ending with the largest, or vice versa. 

• For wild animal seriation designs click here

Homemade Seriation Apple Cards.

The Whole & Half Apple Card Set: For this next apple card set, cut four of each design: four cut apples of yellow, lime green, dark green and bright red and then four uncut apples of yellow, lime green, dark green and bright red. There should be thirty-two cards altogether.

Questions for this card game:

• Match the pairs, each pair should share the same color and include one cut half apple and one whole apple
• Display four apples, three alike and one different. Which apple doesn't belong?
• Display five or six cards and ask the child to identify specific colors, specific cut halves, or whole apples.
• Spread out all the cards face up and ask the child to make a book, four matching cards exactly alike.
• Spread all the cards face down in the pattern of a grid and have the children take turns turning two cards face up. If the two cards each player turns face up match they can take the matching pair and put it into their own personal stack. If the two cards do not match, the player must return them face down to the grid. The player with the most pairs by the end of the game wins. Players must turn cards over until none are left in the grid.

Pictures of the Whole & Half Apple Card set. Far left, Match the pairs., Next, count the red apples.,
Center, make a book., Far Right, Which apple doesn't belong.

More Apple Games: 

• Free Apple Number Puzzles
• Apple Number Match Up Activity
• Even More Apple Themed Activities

Counting Monsters for Fun!

       Moms and Dads, teachers and tutors, babysitters and grandparents can make all kinds of fun flash cards using free fonts and bright, imaginative cut-outs from their local teacher's store. 

       I picked up these funny monster die cuts to enhance the set of number flash cards you see below. This set was on a discount table and they only cost me fifty cents. 

       Then I visited a free font website and downloaded a little monster font to print number flash cards. I embellished the cards with green construction paper and the monster die cuts before laminating the finished flash cards. 

       My young students enjoyed counting the critters! They were able to check themselves for the correct miniature monster count by turning over the card to read the numerical symbols.

Left, I made counting cards using a free monster font. Then I dressed these
up with monster die cuts. Right, the correct number of tiny monsters found
on each card was then labeled on the back of each card.

More Homemade Flash Cards to Craft:

• Preparing for kindergarten: homemade flashcards and other tips from teachers
• Homemade Number Puzzles  - from flash cards
• Alphabet Flash Cards by Charles Buckles Falls

How to arrange objects according to size?

Animal stacking blocks for
 developing seriation skills.

       Arranging objects or pictures according to size is important for cognitive development. This process is referred to as seriation skill in the early learning classroom environment. There are a number of advantages for learners who excel at this skill:

• Students are better prepared for learning mathematics such as: the order of numbers, fractions, addition and subtraction.
• Processes in logical thinking become developed, such as: predicting outcomes, understanding relationships between objects, and making assumptions that can be analyzed.

       Toy companies have been making products for babies for years that encourage even infants to practice seriation skill sets. I've included photos here of an animal box set that I keep among the toys in my home.

• Basic Math Skills in Child Care: Creating Patterns and Arranging Objects in Order
• Making the Most of Math in Early Childhood by the University of Nevada (PDF)
• Teaching Preschool Math - Learn All About It!

My alphabet, animal stacking blocks are stacked according to size.

These elephants with big tusks and long trunks were fun for little ones to arrange from large, to larger, to largest etc...

         Above and below are black and white prints of elephants and rhinos of varying size that I printed, cut and laminated for my classroom several years of ago and these are still in great condition. The laminated surfaces allowed me to wipe them off with a cleanser of some sort before using them over again during many different class periods. Pre-k teachers can make multiple sets of images such as these for youngsters to line up in order of size with only a bit of pocket change.

Students practiced arranging rhinos according to size in my classroom several years ago.

       Below are wild animal clip art samples that visitors may use to make their own personal sets like the projects shown above. Pull the clip art into a Word Document and shrink or enlarge the beasts in order to have prints like the ones you see in my examples. I managed to print six different sizes using standard 8 1/2 x 11 inch typing paper. Start with the largest size and then scale the images down by dragging the corners of each image down to a slightly smaller version of the same image.

A tufted ape clip art image.

A giant sea turtle clip art image.

A striped zebra clip art image.

       "A preschool student stacks cups to organize them by size. View more at earlymath.erikson.edu
       Focus on the Child videos are taken from one-on-one interviews with individual children. The interviews are designed to elicit evidence of children's mathematical thinking. They are not teaching episodes or formal assessments."