Wednesday, October 7, 2009

Apples and Leaves


Sometime ago, I said I wanted to post on Aiden's blog the particular theme we're working on. I'm finally getting around to it and I'll start with what we're doing now then go back as time allows and post the others. I hope to keep these up as a recurring post everytime we start something new. This is good documentation for Aiden's journey, but I hope it helps others too. If you have anything to add (activities, songs, etc), please leave them in the comments section for all to see!

With fall in the air, what a better time to work on the two things that remind me most of this beautiful season - apples and leaves. We started with apples/fruits about a month ago, but added in leaves. We're slowly moving on to pumpkins/Halloween for our next theme.


Theme: Apples and Leaves

Vowel Variety: oo, yum, oh, wow, up, down, fall, ah, pretty

Functional Words in Phrases: cut, peel, more, bite, crunchy, smooth, down, uh-oh, eat, pick, pour ... etc.

Activities:

  • Play farm/store/baby with apples
  • Cut up an apple and look at the core, seeds, stem, apple slices
  • Use half the cut apple and apple slices, dip in paint, and press onto paper.
  • Make an apple pie and/or apple butter
  • Go apple picking and/or visit a Farmer's Market
  • Separate the apples or leaves into big and small
  • Go on a walk and watch the leaves fall from the trees and hear them crunch under our feet
  • Play in a pile of leaves talking/singing about throwing them "up, up, up" then watching them fall down, down, down and hearing them "crunch, crunch, crunch".
  • Collect all shapes, sizes, and colors of leaves then bring them home to use in song play, books, arts/crafts, etc.
  • Print out apple/leaf clip art to color
  • and ... climbing trees with dad



    • Books:



      • Up, Up, Up! It's Apple Picking Time, by Jody Fickes Shapiro
      • Apples, Apples!, by Salina Yoon
      • Apples, by Gail Gibbons
      • Leaves, Leaves!, by Salina Yoon
      • Leaves, Leaves, Leaves!, by Nancy Elizabeth Wallace
      • It's Fall!, by Linda Glaser

      Songs/Finger Plays:

      Falling Apples (to the tune of London Bridges)
      This is Aiden's favorite song for both apples and leaves (just replace apples with leaves) I use real leaves and real apples and do the motions as we sing.

      See the apples falling down,
      Falling down, falling down,
      See the apples falling down,
      Down to the ground.
      Pick the apples and throw them up,
      throw them up, throw them up.
      Pick the apples and throw them up,
      Up to the sky

      Applesauce (to the tune of Yankee Doodle)
      Peel an apple, cut it up
      Cook it in a pot, When you taste it
      You will find, it's applesauce you've got!

      Apples/All the Leaves are Falling (to the tune of Are You Sleeping?)
      Apples are falling, apples are falling,
      From the tree, from the tree.
      Pick up all the apples, pick up all the apples,
      One, two three. One, two, three.

      Five Little Apples (similar to Five Little Pumpkins or Five Little Monkeys)
      Five little apples hanging on a tree
      The farmer didn't care
      So guess who came to eat?
      A caterpillar! Munch, munch, munch!
      Repeat four more times using a different animal
      (again, I use real apples and leaves and whatever toy animals/puppets I have. It's a lot of fun singing this with the names of people in your family too!)

      We sing all these songs with props and Aiden is very active in it. He likes making the animals eat the apples and the leaves or picking up the leaves and throwing them in the air! Another idea is to use a felt board if you have one and use cut out felt apples and leaves.

      With this theme, he's voiced apple a couple of times. I don't even know how to spell how he says it, but it's more of just the vowels "a - le" without too much of the /l/. I just can't get him to say that dang /p/! Whenever he sees an apple he does say "mmmmm" and rubs his belly! When I ask where the leaves are, he'll look up in the tree or throw his hands up.

      7 comments:

      Christian and Lily's Mommy said...

      LOVE THAT BOY! I did mini carmel apples last year for Christian----search the blog and you'll get the recipe :)

      Kat said...

      Wow, what a creative approach! You are an amazing mommy, Tammy. Every time I read your blog, I gather a new piece of knowledge that I can use here with Thomas.

      You sure you can't move back to Keller?

      Ben's Mom said...

      Great ideas, Tammy. You are an awesome mom!

      Melanie said...

      Great post.

      Mom to Toes said...

      OMG, Tammy! You need to start a whole separate blog of therapy ideas. These are fantastic!

      PolyglotMom said...

      Love this post! Thanks for all the great ideas! Where did you get them, or did you just come up with them on your own? I have to tell you that this post makes me jealous that I have to be working, because I'd love to do that stuff all.day.long. I will use some ideas on the weekend though. Thanks!

      tammy said...

      Jen - It's all a good combo of our AVT, TOD, and myself. I wish I had time to do all this everyday too, but reality is you get done what's fun and convenient at the time!