Letter of the Week A-Z Series: A is for Apple

Look no further for fun and education A is for Apple activities for you and your kids, perfect for preschool at home or school.

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I can’t believe how many fun ideas we came up for the letter A that kids can do as they learn including an A is for Apple craft, free printable letter A word cards, apple game using things around the house, reading an apple book, and baking an apple tree recipe. Come check it all out and choose what activities to do with your kids at home or school.

WELCOME WELCOME!!! Thanks so much for joining us I am so excited to get school started and share our first post in the Perfect Tot School & Preschool A-Z activities.

My plan for the year:
My goal is to teach my kids through fun games, crafts, and activities and share them with you :). Like any family we are always busy, so we fit school time in between visits to grandmas, trips to the store, and the normal adventures of being a family with growing kids running around.

• Each week will have a letter theme, so 26 weeks of learning and fun!
• 3 activities a week, or more if we find time
• Activities should last around 30 min.-1 hour
• Activities will be designed for both age groups with possible modifications or just for one age group and will be labeled accordingly
• Free printables, book, and song suggestions will be included
• Tot School Curriculum Goals:
  • Memorization
  • Exploration
  • Life Skills
  • Increasing attention span
  • Motor skills
  • Creativity
  • Problem Solving
• Preschool Curriculum Goals:
  • Introduction to letters and sounds
  • Introduction to numbers
  • Introduction to hand writing
  • Science
  • Motor skills
  • Creativity
  • Problem Solving

Find all our Language Arts Activities here.

Letter A Word Cards: Free Printable (Click on picture and download or print or click here–> Letter A Word Cards

Ideas for printable:

• Place word and matching picture out when doing an activity that matches the word
• Color the cards
• Read the word together and match the word with the picture
• Point and name the letters on the card
• Write the letter of the week on each card
• Write the word on each card

I cut and laminate our cards before we use them. The ideas for this printable vary in difficulty. Choose the one(s) that work best for your child.

A is For Apple Activities

Suggested Book: 10 Apples Up on Top by Theo Lesieg

Letter A Craft: “A” is for Apple Tree

We had fun getting creative and making the letter A into an apple tree.

Objectives: Letter recognition, creativity, fine motor skills Age Group: Preschool

Supplies:

• White paper
• Red and green paint
• Paintbrush
• Glue
• Toilet paper rolls or brown paper

Directions:

1.  Cut toilet paper rolls or craft paper into strips. We used toilet paper rolls in hopes that our A would look rounded like tree trunks. After they where painted, handled, and glued they fell a bit flat so you way just want to use craft paper.

2.  Draw and cut out the top part of the tree. I just made a big cloud shaped design on green paper.

3. Paint the toilet paper rolls (pieces of the A) brown. Paint the top part of the tree green and use a finger or a q-tip to paint the apples on the tree red. Set the pieces out to dry.

4.  Glue the brown toilet paper roll pieces on your paper in the shape of an A (2 pieces for each leg, and one piece for the middle. We cut one of the pieces in half to make it thinner for the middle)

 5. To finish, glue the top part of the tree to the A.

Hidden Apple Game

Super simple to set up and a fun way to practice counting and sorting.

Objectives: Counting, sorting, and number practice

Age Group: Preschool

Supplies:

• Brown paper
• Green lids or green cupcake liners
• Small apples (we used cherries for our Hi-Ho Cherry-O game, small pieces of paper, buttons, or beads would work fine)

Directions:

Cut out a tree trunk shape from the brown paper.

 Place the paper on the table and arrange lids at the top of the tree trunk to look like leaves.

 Hide apples underneath the lids and have your child find the apples, count the apples, and then repeat using a different amount of apples.

If you used different color apples, you could also sort the apples by color and then count them according to color.

Apple Tree Muffin Recipe

My kiddos always love getting in the kitchen with me. When I am on top of my game I like to gather and measure all the ingredients with them before starting to cook. That way we can measure and count all at once and I think it’s nice for the kids to see all the ingredients at one time, a sort of before and after comparison.

Age Group: Preschool/Tot School/Any age that likes muffins!

Yield: 9 large muffins

Ingredients:

• 1 egg
• 1/2 C. oil
• 3 tsp vanilla
• 1 C. sugar
• 1 1/2 C. flour
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 1/2 tsp cinnamon
• 2 apples
• Ice cream cones
• 4 T sweetened condensed milk or frosting
• 45 mini marshmallows (5 per muffin)
• 3/4 C. coconut flakes
• Green & red food coloring

Directions:

 Mix the wet ingredients together.

 Mix in all the dry ingredients. The batter will be really crumbly.

 Peel and core the apple. Then cut up and mash. Our apple was pretty soft so we used a potato masher to smash the apple. Ms. Tiger loved this part! Just to warn you, we had apple flying everywhere. You could put the apples in a food processor for a less messy alternative or if your apples are too firm to mash by hand.

 Add the apples to the batter and mix in.

 Use cupcake liners or spray your muffin tin with non-stick spray. Fill the cups full. Ms. Tiger loved mushing the thick batter into each cup.

 Bake at 350 degrees for approximately 25 minutes. Remove from the oven and let cool.

 To make the top of the apple tree put coconut and green food coloring in a bag and shake the bag until the coconut is all green for the leaves. Then mix 3 tbs. sweetened condensed milk or frosting with green food coloring. This will be used to use to stick the coconut to the cupcake.

Mix 1 tbs. sweetened condensed milk or frosting with red food coloring. Paint the marshmallows red. We used tongs to hold the marshmallows while we painted helped out a lot because everything gets pretty sticky. We used 5 marshmallows per muffin. You could also use red candy.

 To assemble your apple muffin tree coat the top of the muffin with the green sweetened condensed milk or frosting. Sprinkle the green coconut on top then stick the red apple marshmallows on top. If your marshmallows aren’t sticking very well dip them in a little more sweetened condensed milk or frosting before sticking them on the tree.

 The apple tree muffins are really top heavy so I don’t recommend this final step until you are ready to eat.  Unwrap the muffin from the cupcake wrapper and place it inside the ice cream cone.