How do you like them apples?
During the fall, a plentiful harvest and the low cost of apples provides us with a great theme to introduce to the children – APPLES! When I taught kindergarten, we used apples as a means to explore all sorts of mathematical and scientific concepts. For the month of September, let’s explore Apples together.
Graphing-
Make sure to purchase a variety of apples; big and small, red, green and yellow. Place them in a large bowl and ask the children to sort them according to size or color (Don’t expect young children to consider two aspects of something simultaneously; i.e. color and size). Once sorted into groups, help children to create a graph that represents how many of each group. Enjoy the apples at snack time.
Singing-
Have you ever heard the song “Way up High in the Apple Tree”? I have sung this song with young children for years and years. I don’t know who wrote it or where it came from (if I did, I would cite it!). It goes like this:
“Way up high in the apple tree (hold hands up and wiggle fingers)
4 little apples smiled at me (hold up 2 fingers on each hand and wiggle them)
I shook that tree as hard as I could (pretend to shake that tree)
and 2 fell out….mmm, mmm good. (Show 2 fingers falling down and leave 2 fingers up).”
Follow up the verse with the question, “If there were 4 apples and 2 fell out, how many are left?”.
Repeat the song with different quantities of apples and different numbers falling out.
I wish I could sing it for you so you could hear the tune….I will explore that as a possibility for another time.
I will have the children do this project on what kind of apples they like and have the kids write it on the board.
If you write it on a large piece of paper, you can hang it in the classroom throughout the month as evidence of your exploration of apples.