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."

Paper Cuts of Children With a Pony

A girl and a boy lead a pony through a pasture.

A boy balances on a chair, a pony nips and pulls away.

A boy rides a pony and a girl greets him.

The Train by C. H. Crandall

The Train

by C. H. Crandall

Hark!

It comes!

It hums!

With ear to ground

I catch the sound,

The warning courier-roar

That runs along before.

The pulsing, struggling, now is clearer!

The hillsides echo "nearer, nearer,"

Till like a drove of rushing, trampling

cattle,

With dust and wind and clang and 

Shriek and rattle,

Passes the cyclops of the train!

I see a fair face at the pane,--

Like a piano string

The rails, unburdened, sing;

The white smoke flies

Up to the skies;

The sound 

Is drowned--

Hark!

The Woodpecker

The Woodpecker

by Elizabeth Madox Roberts

The woodpecker pecked out a little round hole

And made him a house in the telephone pole.

One day when I watched he poked out his head,

And he had on a hood and a collar of red.

When the streams of rain pour out of the sky,

And the sparkles of lightning go flashing by,

And the big, big wheels of thunder roll

He can snuggle back in the telephone pole.

Woodpecker feeds here babies, well one of them anyhow.

The Sea Gull by Mary Howitt

The Sea Gull

by Mary Howitt

Oh, the white Sea-gull, the wild Sea-gull,

A joyful bird is he,

As he lies like a cradled thing at rest

In the arms of a sunny sea!

The little waves rock to and fro,

And the white gull lies asleep,

As the fisher's bark, with breeze and tide,

Goes merrily over the deep!

The ship, with her fair sails set, goes by,

And her people stand to note

How the Sea-gull sits on the rocking waves,

As if in an anchored boat.

The sea is fresh, the sea is fair,

And the sky calm overhead,

And the Sea-gull lies on the deep, deep sea.

Like a king in his royal bed.