Week 1 has been all about the letter A and has revolved a lot around apples. We’ve tasted the different varieties, sliced apples, counted their seeds…. all of the above. I was a little bummed that apple picking couldn’t be thrown in there, but evidently a late season frost ruined the entire crop. I mean, why not, it is 2020 after all 😐.
I wanted to add a counting game to the list of activities for the week. To be totally transparent, I really just wanted to use my laminator because it’s a sick addiction. But also, my kids knowing how to count is probably a great side effect as well. This activity was simple to put together and they really enjoyed it!
I found some green paper in my stash and cut out 10 cloud-like shapes to be the treetops. These definitely weren’t going to win any awards, but they did the trick. Naturally, I had to laminate them, but really this step could be skipped… especially if you use a thicker paper like a good cardstock. Then, just add the velcro dots (the spiky side)… started with 1/tree, then 2, and all the way up to 10. Gather up some toilet paper tubes and use those as the tree trunks (we found they stood better when we slit the bottoms and folded them up for some extra support). To get the tree tops to stay on the trunks, just cut 2 slits in each treetop about the width apart that the toilet paper roll was wide so they just slide right on. And that’s it!
While I was preparing the trees, I had the girls pick out all of the green, yellow and red pompoms out of our big bucket. This was a nice way to keep them entertained and occupied… I usually like to have things ready to go when I have activities planned, but with H being sick the day before, I didn’t get the chance to have this one ready.
What I really liked about this activity is that there are so many ways to play! The instructions started simple, “find one red apple for the first tree”; “find two yellow apples for the second tree”, etc. Another way to play was giving them a specific tree and letting them determine how many apples they needed. For L(5), I would also have her sort her apples by color after she had chosen them. Once she had them sorted, we would talk about how (using the example to the left) 2 red + 3 yellow +2 green = 7 apples total. Use tweezers for even more fine motor focus. Really, the options are endless.
As they finished sticking the apples on the trees, we wrote each number on the tree trunks to help with number recognition.
If I were to do this again, I would probably only go until 5. They were really invested through probably 6 and tolerated it until we got to 8. But there was no way we were going to make it to 10 without me finishing the last 2. And that was totally okay with me! I also loved that this was done with all materials that we have at the house already!
Let me know if you try this one with your kiddos! I would love to see photos! See you soon
