Preschool Corner: Leaves and Apples

This year I am teaching the K-4 class at our homeschool co-op. My Father's World kindergarten curriculum is used for this group. Every week there is a new theme. The other preschool teacher begins the lesson on Tuesday, and I wrap it up on Thursday. There are suggestions for books, discussion ideas, and activities included in the curriculum. Here are some of the activities I added myself during our Leaf and Apple weeks:

I had asked my own kids at h0me to gather dry, brown leaves outside for me to take to school. I let the kids make a big mess on the table crumbling up the leaves. (One even told her mom after class, "We got to make a mess!" I drew the outline of a leaf with glue on a piece of construction paper and let them fill in the inside with glue.

Then, they used their crumbled leaves to cover the glue. After they finished covering the glue, they gently shook the paper to remove the extra pieces of leaves.

I also gathered all different shapes of leaves from my house. I made outlines of several of the leaves on a piece of paper and asked my students to find the matches. We also talked about "largest" and "smallest," leaves, etc.


They picked a couple of their leaves to make leaf rubbings. I wrote their "words to remember" (which are something they learn each week as a part of the MFW curriculum) on their paper and asked them to each hold up their paper and recite their words.

They all got a straw to blow a leaf across the table. We had several races to see who could get a leaf across the table the fastest.

Our last leaf activity: I bought wooden (2/$1) leaves at Hobby Lobby, and they had fun creatively painting their leaves.

One activity for apple leaf used their cutting and coloring skills. They colored their apples (which I found at kidssoup.com), then cut the apple along the wavy lines. They had to glue the pieces of their apple back together on construction paper. Again, I wrote their "words to remember" on their apples and asked them to recite them.

I printed off another page of a tree scene. The kids got to stick their fingers in green, red, and yellow paint to make apples for their trees. This was also used as a counting activity.

I also brought my fall sensory tub to school with me. Tornado, Dash, and Sissy have been busy at home, playing with it.


The tub included dry split peas and various other dry beans (FYI: raw kidney beans are toxic so you have to watch out for those), cinnamon sticks, wooden leaves & acorns, plastic leaf and pumpkin buttons, felt owls, tin buckets in different sizes, peat pots, pine cones, and a miniature rake, hoe, and shovel from the dollhouse section at Hobby Lobby.

During Apple Week, I also added the red, yellow, and green craft pom pons to be used as apples.

I asked the kids to sort the items by type into the muffin tins. Then, they played store and restaurant for half an hour.

Linking up to Preschool Corner!

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The Sunday Showcase