Learning the alphabet comes in many forms. Our Alphabet For Starters series is all about playing with letters in a creative environment and this letter activity was a huge hit! There are lots of ways of changing it around for different levels too so don’t miss my notes after the tutorial if you want to do this with children who aren’t just starting out with letters. This may seem like a simple letter activity and it is but it’s sneaky too. Little fingers have to peel the apples off giving their fine motor skills some serious work.
- Gather your materials. This picture is incomplete because I shifted my plan part way through and so glad I did, the final result was a blast! You will need some craft paper or paper bag, brown paint, paint brush, marker, scissors, contact paper, and green, yellow and red paper . A basket is not a must but if you have one grab it.
- Start by cutting a truck from craft paper or a paper bag. I taped it down because my daughter is exuberant with paint ( you’ll see) and this helps keep it all in one place.
- Paint with a brush…
- Or your hands. You really don’t need to have your child(ren) help make the tree but when kids help make the activity there is a deeper connection to the learning.
- While that is drying and you are done washing the gallons of paint off your toddler make some apples from red and yellow paper.
- Add letters.
- Once it’s dry tape the trunk to the wall . Add tape to the back of green paper and add it to the tree.
- Cover the top of the tree with contact paper sticky side OUT.
- Add the apples.
- Make sure that you are leaving a corner of the apple off to peel off.
- Basket in hand and ready to pick her apples!
- She really had a great time and got excited to announce which apples she was picking. As always she chose the first letter of her name first followed by the mine, her brother’s and her dad’s. It’s exciting to see that she connects letters to people meanings outside of the immediate activity. As soon as we were done she bolted from the playroom full basket in hand to show her dad all her letter apples. I would have taken a shot of his but he was sorting laundry and well my literal dirty laundry has no place on the internet .
How to take it to the next step :
- Have a chart of lowercase letters and have your child peel off the uppercase apples to match the lowercase letters.
- Use sight words instead of letters. Call out the sight word and have your child find , peel and pop them in the basket.
“A” Was Once An Apple Pie by Edward Lear and Suse MacDonald is an adaptation of the classic Edward Lear poem that had both my children transfixed. The bold bright colors kept my daughter who is 10 months old wide eyed the whole time and the playful way Suse MacDonald adapted the text had my son listening from A-Z as well. It was incredibly fun to read allowed tongue tying me at times which resulted in us all giggling hysterically in a heap. A book that can do that is a must have in my opinion.