Ten Apples Up On Top!

One of the books we read this week to go with our apples theme was Ten Apples Up On Top!. Caleb just loved the book and asked me to read it multiple times during the week. I wanted to come up with some type of craft to go along with the book.

I took an empty egg carton and red paint and we made "apples". It was a beautiful day to be outside so we brought our supplies to the front porch, donned our smocks, and started painting!

After the paint dried, I cut out the individual "apples".

Then we started acting out the book. We counted out the apples and put them on our heads. Caleb had the most fun running around the house, holding the apples on top of his head and shouting, "The mop! The mop! We can not let our apples drop!".

The Letter "A"

I really dropped the ball earlier this week in terms of taking pictures of our activities. Luckily I still have some of our finished products.

Each week we will be using the letter posters from ABC Jesus Loves Me to learn the letter of the week. For the letter A we stamped apples in red ink (of course!) inside the letters.

We also used tactile sandpaper letters that I got from Amazon and the chants from ABCJLM for learning how to form the letters. I put them on the wall at Caleb's height so he could play with them at any time.

And of course we had to use that yummy apple pie scented playdough we made to learn our letters, too!

I chose not to focus too much on the phoenetic sound of the letter, but Caleb picked it up very well. I'll continue to introduce phonics, but it won't be my main focus this year. I was just proud whenever he would point out the letter A on things around the house, in books, or while out on errands. I can teach my child! :)

Apple Pie Scented Playdough

This week is our A is for Apples theme. We are learning the color red to go along with the theme. I originally thought about having Caleb play with red Playdoh during the week, but came across a recipe for apple pie scented playdough on The Picky Apple and decided it was perfect to go with our lessons! I did tweak it just a tad since I was missing one of the ingredients. I've put my altered recipe below.

Apple Pie Scented Playdough

Ingredients:

• 1 cup flour
• 1/2 cup salt
• 1 Tablespoon olive oil
• 1 Tablespoon cream of tartar
• 1 cup water
• Red food coloring
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
• 1/8 teaspoon ground allspice

Stir ingredients together well in pot.  Over medium heat cook the dough, stirring constantly until it forms a ball.  Turn dough onto a board (or the counter top) and knead until very smooth.  Cool.  Store in a covered plastic container.

It smells amazing! I was so excited about making scented playdough that I've decided to make scented dough to go with the rest of the colors we learn. I'll post those recipes in the coming weeks.