Apple Tree Felt Board: Farmer Brown's Apples!

I never get tired of apples, and I never get tired of apple felt boards!  And I never get tired of making up (or piggy backing) apple songs and rhymes to use at circle time...

You can see past apple felt board fun right here.

But onward we must go!  Or backwards, in this case--to a song from way back in my early days of teaching.  

Now there are LOTS of ways to mix this song up.  

🍏I've done it by inviting children up to pick an apple of the tree and pretend to eat it.  

🍎I've been the farmer and eaten all the apples myself!

🍏I've had a puppet eat the apples, too.

🍎And in this version, I use felt characters from my dragon, elephant, Over in the Meadow, unicorn, and Kwanzaa sets to munch up those sweet, crispy apples!  

I kind of love this song, and I hope you will, too!  Let's sing!

Apple Tree Felt Board: Wiggly Worm Hide & Seek!

Apples + circle time.  They go together like peanut butter and jelly.  In fact, they're so popular that I have written about them before: here, and here, and even here!

🐁 💗And combined with my love of the classic circle time game Little Mouse, I love apple felt board sets even more :)  (Rhyming.  Early literacy.  Color recognition.  Fun.  💗)

Throw in a cute, wiggly worm, and my heart is all aflutter ;) 

If you need a little more info on why and how the Little Mouse game is so fabulous, please take a look here and definitely here.  

And if you need no introduction, let's just skip right to the video!

Apple Tree Felt Board: Apple Count Up!

It's been a long time, but I've written about this apple felt board set once before, right here.  And in that post, I did include these lyrics, but it's not till now that I've finally got a video for you!

This apple circle time counting song is a great way to get the kids counting UP from 1-5. It’s all done in a playful way, so kids don’t even know they’re doing math 😊 Plus, there’s a little science thrown in, and color recognition to boot… Hello, apple circle time fun!

Here are the lyrics again:

Apple Count Up © Wendy Gerbi

No apples on this tree, growing for you and me, 

No sweet fruit for us to bite and crunch...

One flower starts to bloom, 

An apple will be here soon…

Now there is one sweet juicy fruit—yum, yum! 

And here, without further ado, is the video:

Fruit Song for Kids: Fruit Salad Ballad!

I can't have a felt board set that can only be used one way, now can I??  No, I can't!

My Rainbow Stew set is definitely a favorite with kids and educators.  It's magical, for sure.  I've got a video of that fun song right here.

But of course I needed to write another song for it.  A fruity song.  A song that includes colors and rhyming and pretending...

So I did.  And I called it Fruit Salad Ballad.  Because I think that's so darn cute.

Here's the video--I hope you love it and use it with your kids as soon as possible :) There will be picking, and plucking, and chopping and tossing and eating!  Get ready for fruity fun!

Oh!  And now you can also get a pattern and make your own set!  Click below :)

Apple Tree Felt Board Set

 I love nice, crisp, sweet apples on a nice, crisp, sweet fall day!  I also love soft, adorable felt apples on any kind of day.  That's why I made my APPLE bingo set, and it's never failed me yet.

But how did those apples even grow?  Were apple blossoms involved in some way?? And now that we've got apples, shouldn't we count them?  And wait, wouldn't it be fun to hide a worm behind the apples?  Yes!  Yes!  Let's make a huge apple tree set that we can play with in all kinds of ways!

First, let's make them grow.  We'll start off with a bare tree, with no little apples growing on it.  And then an apple blossom starts to grow...and soon, it turns right into an apple!  

Apple Count Up © Wendy Gerbi

No apples on this tree, growing for you and me, 

No sweet fruit for us to bite and crunch...

One flower starts to bloom, 

An apple will be here soon…

Now there is one sweet juicy fruit—yum, yum! 

After a while, we'll have five apples just waiting for us!  How will we get them down??

Apple Tree © Wendy Gerbi

Down in the orchard, way up in a tree 

Were five crisp apples looking so juicy. 

________ shook the tree as hard as they could! 

And down dropped an apple—it tasted so good! 

Here's a video of that one:

And that wiggly worm is perfect to play an apple version of Little Mouse.  Ah, apples for days :)

Happy Fall!

Patterns Now Available!

Woo hoo--I'm so excited to be sharing a new project... 

I've just released 11 of my sets as 

digital download PATTERNS!!  

If you're reading this blog, you are probably a teacher, librarian, or homeschooling parent.  And you might even fit into the "crafty" segment of one of those groups :)  If so--or even if you are brand new to making your own felt board set--these patterns are for you. 

I've started the pattern section of my shop with a few simple, a few more intermediate, and a few of my more complex designs.  

No matter which pattern you choose, they are all simple to create and come with written and visual instructions.  

I've even included video tips and tutorials to make cutting, assembling and gluing your set as easy as possible.

And of course, they all come with lyrics to songs and/or rhymes, and a list of book titles that go along well with the set.

I think they're totally amazing, and I hope you will too.

Ready to get started?  

You can check out all the patterns right here, 

or click the picture below :)

A-P-P-L-E

My three-year-olds like B-I-N-G-O, but I think they love A-P-P-L-E even more.  The visual of the bites taken out of the apples helps them remember to say "crunch" instead of the letter.  It just seems easier than replacing the letter with a clap.

We have a lot of fun talking about letters and letter sounds when we do this (and various other Bingo variations we have in the room).  The children find it hilarious when we say "Oh!  We took away the A, so now it says "p-ple"!

It's also fun to take away the letters in the wrong order:  A-P-Crunch-L-E, instead of always going from left to right.

Click here to buy this set!

I used a combination of ideas from Storytime Katie and Storytime ABCs.  We sing:

There is a fruit I like to eat and apple is it's name-o!

A-P-P-L-E, A-P-P-L-E, A-P-P-L-E,

and apple is it's name-o!

Then as we turn over each letter to see the bite taken out of the apple, we replace the letter name with "crunch!"