Adding Up Apples

If you didn’t get enough educational apple goodness from our posts on great art and science activities to do with apples, you definitely have to check out Keen on Kindergarten’s post on apple-themed math stations. With these cute and easy ideas, math for your little ones is just plain, hands-on fun. Here are a few ways you can use Meredith’s activities to help your children learn and grow.

Apple
Apple / Alessio Maffeis / CC BY 2.0

Patterns and Sorting

How many different ways can your children sort apples? By shape? By size? By color? Have them take their sorting practice one step further by using their categories to create patterns. You can also do simple apple cutouts in different colored papers as pattern makers. Have your children trace and cut the apple cutouts themselves for extra motor skills practice.

Counting

Print out the simple apple tree mat and use pom-poms or red counters and give your child a number to count to. If you’re cooking with apples, save aside the seeds in a jar and have your child estimate how many seeds are in the jar. Write down their guess and have them count out the seeds to see how close they got.

Graph Practice

Several of the activities from Keen on Kindergarten use spinners or dice to choose apples with different shapes, colors, or numbers. Use the data they come up with to create a chart and use the chart to make different types of graphs. This is a great activity to talk about which types of graph display different types of information the best.