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!

Using Ramps at Small Group time

Science and math happen all the time during play, but sometimes its fun (or necessary for assessment reasons) to set up an activity and take the time to make note of what the kids know and understand.  Ramps are a great option for this, because they are fun, easily accessible, and kids love them! 

When I planned with my co-teachers for small group activities, there were two main goals:  1.  We wanted the kids to have fun and 2. We wanted the activity to allow us to easily gather the info we needed for whatever assessment we were focusing on.  For this activity, our assessment goals were to see whether the children used and understood distance, position and comparison words like close, far, near, farther, closer, higher, lower, faster, slower, etc.

So all we need for this activity are ramps (we had flat boards and some double unit blocks that we used) various things to prop them on at varying heights, balls and other small toys that do and don't roll, a roll of masking tape, and a pen.

We'd break the kids up into pairs (this is a great time to pair up kids who might not normally choose to work together, just to expand their horizons!) and give them all of the materials (other than the pen, which you'll be using).  We'd give them a little prep or a challenge, like "Can you guys see which of your toys can roll or slide down your ramp the fastest?"  And off they go!  

As they work together, using tape to mark where their toys land, you can write the names of the items on those pieces of tape, and encourage them to try things in different ways.  "What if you make your ramp lower?  Does that make the ball roll faster or slower?  Does the block go far from the ramp, or stay close?  How can you make your toys move more quickly?  Why can't things roll UP the ramp?"  Have a notepad or clipboard all set up ahead of time with the kids' names already printed, and jot down notes about what they do and say to transfer to your assessment tool later.  You can even use the marked pieces of tape to make a graph with the kids, noting which things traveled farthest from the ramp...