Quote: An Apple a day keeps the Doctor away
Not only does the apple keep the doctor away but it can be enjoyed in every season and lends to a whole lot of fun activities.
My personal favourite is sipping hot apple cider on cold days. It brings nostalgic memories of our family watching my son play hockey at a cold ice rink.
My book suggestion is How to Make an Apple Pie and See the World by the children's author Marjorie Priceman. It’s a fun kid's book that takes children to different countries around the world to gather ingredients to make a delicious apple pie. The illustrations are vibrant, giving a glimpse of how people live in other places. Extend the activity by making an apple pie with the recipe found at the end of the book.
Apples provide countless opportunities for teaching skills such as: sorting and grouping by colour or size, patterning, sequencing, number value and fractions. And, they don’t have to be limited to the table, think about on the floor, on the wall…What our children loved the most was poking apple pieces with toothpicks and building an edible tower.
Apples are also useful in expanding language skills. In our circles, the children enjoyed action fingerplays (See sample) and hands-on manipulatives to learn upper- and lower-case alphabets or opposites.
Children also enjoyed putting milk in a hollowed apple and blowing with a straw to make "apple shake". Not only did this activity help strengthen the muscles around the mouth and speech development but it also increased the science of understanding air movement.
Talking about science, don’t forget to make shrunken apple heads. Simply add lemon juice and salt on peeled and carved apples and observe as they are left in a warm dry place.
Apples are nutritious…high in fiber, vitamins and antioxidants.
Fun fact: The apple core has the highest amount of probiotics and beneficial bacteria than the entire fruit. Try making fried apple fritters with the core, baked apple chips or a simple old fashioned apple crisp.
Photo by Dilyara Garifullina on Unsplash
For more free worksheets, free activities and my kids book check my other blogs.
Children's Author: Zulebia Esmail