Apple picking is a wonderful, Fall fun activity that all members of the family can take part in, but what happens to all of those apples once you get home? Here are some great ideas for you that cover an array of developmental areas, making your apples not only a delicious treat, but also an educational opportunity.
5 Mouth Watering Apple Recipes
The smell of baking apples and cinnamon immediately brings to mind the nostalgia of Fall weather, jeans, sweaters, and warm drinks. Here are a few great recipes to help you use up some of those apples!
Use Your Senses
- Taste & Hearing: Cut up different kinds of apples and allow children to taste test! Listen to the sound the apple makes when you bite into it. Does it crunch? Using descriptive words helps children to build their vocabulary as well as learn to express differences. To enhance this activity, you can also create a bar graph with your results! Enhance learning by asking multiple questions about the apples.
- Which apple tasted the sweetest?
- Tell me, which apple tasted the most bitter?
- Which apple was the juiciest?
- Smell & Touch: Make apple, cinnamon play dough! This is a great way to incorporate the science of cooking (watching separate ingredients change consistency and form to create something new) into your activity! Rolling, kneading, and moving around the play dough helps to develop the muscles in children’s hands, further developing their fine motor abilities. Click here for a great recipe!!
- Sight: Try out your sorting skills! Using your eyes to sort different apples is an awesome way to bring math to life in a fun and simple way. You can sort by size or color. To enhance this activity, have children create patterns (or copy patterns you have created) such as red, red, green, red, red, green.
Create Fall Fun Masterpieces
- Painting: Cut apples in half (top to bottom) and dip them in paint to create beautiful apple prints. You can also cut them in half (side to side) and dip them in the paint to create different types of prints (these will look like they have a star in the middle where the seeds are!). You can use red, yellow, and green paints to look like the colors of apples, or get creative and use your child’s choice of color.
- Building: Cut apples into small square chunks and give children toothpicks. Have the children stick the toothpicks into the apple chunks. Then, connect the pieces together to create all kinds of different structures!
Get Scientific With Your Apples
- Dissection: Dissect your apples and show children all of the different parts. You can start this activity by asking them how many different parts they think an apple has! Do you know? Hint: seeds, skin, core, flesh, and stem! Lay the pieces out and let children explore. You can even talk about how apple trees grow from the seed!
- Apple Water Table: Drop your apples into a bucket of water to see if they sink or float! Add to this activity by using salad tongs to “bob” for apples. Using the tongs is a great fine motor exercise as well!
As you can see, there are countless things that you can do to use up all of the apples that you had so much fun picking at the orchard. Reading books about apples is another way to bring additional learning to life this season. Begin your Fall fun by reading How Do Apples Grow? by Jill McDonald.
About The Author
Sarah Proctor has worked with young children for over 25 years as a teacher, childcare director, nanny, and mom of two girls. She has her Bachelors Degree in Early Childhood Education and Administration from UMass Amherst. In addition, Sarah has her Director 2 certification from the Department of Early Education and Care.
