1-2-3 Come Do Some Apple and Pumpkin Activities With Me!
One of the much-needed skills for little ones, is the ability to cut. Just learning how to hold a scissors is quite an accomplishment for some. To help my Y5's strengthen their hand muscles and increase dexterity, I incorporated cutting practice in some form or another every day. To make this less tedious and frustrating, many of the activities revolved around creating a craft that included other skills as well.
Keeping this in mind, I designed "A-peel-ing Apples" so children could practice cutting in a circle. This is a wonderful opportunity to add the term spiral to students' vocabulary as well. Giving a red, yellow or lime green color choice for the apple, also reinforces that science fact.
To add a bit more pizzazz, older students can glue two different colors together. The thicker paper lessens the drop of the spiral, and the double-sided colors add interest to the dangler. Students glue a stem and leaf to the top. Punch a hole; add a yarn loop and suspend from the ceiling, or as a border against a hallway wall. Click on the link to view/download the A-peel-ing Apples activity.
Cutting on a straight line is also not that easy for some little ones. These apple and pumpkin "strip" puzzles, will not only give your students practice with that skill, but review and reinforce sequencing numbers from 1-10, skip counting by 10's, or counting backwards from 10-1. I've used a dashed-line font, for the numbers on the apples and pumpkins, so that students can get some writing practice in. Encourage children to count quietly as they trace the numbers.
Simply choose a number concept you want to work on and run off the puzzles on construction paper. Children choose a puzzle; trace the numbers; cut the strips, lay them in the proper sequence on a sheet of black construction paper, and then glue them down.
Remind students to keep a small space between the strips. Students add a stem and leaf to the top. You can make the pumpkin more of a keepsake, by having children, or a room helper, trace their hand, with their fingers spread, onto green construction paper. They trim and glue next to their stem. Completed projects make a sweet harvest bulletin board.
You may want to laminate one of each kind, to keep in your math center. Each puzzle has its own Baggie. Children can work indepently, or pick a partner to play "Speed" against. The first one who completes their puzzle, is the winner. Click on the link to view/download the Apple and Pumpkin Number Puzzles.
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