Fall

My favorite season for preschool because there's just so much fun stuff to do! Here's what we did:

Dramatic Play

Apple Orchard/Leaf Raking







Fellow teachers: I've tried many different ways to "hang" the apples each year. Each way has its pros and cons. This year I just did balls of masking tape and it worked great for a day, but each day after pulling and placing the balls so many times, I had to replace it, which wasn't a big deal. If you've tried this in your dramatic play areas at school, let me know how you did it! This idea is one of my most pinned, so I'd love to see how it's working for you.

Then added the Pumpkin Patch after 2 days. Also, foud the cutest banners and apple bags at Target that I had to have!! Perfect for this center. I love fall!





Blocks 

Wood train sets


They loved it, so it was an option all week, along with the 4 seasons puzzle and usual blocks.

Art

Tissue paper squares and liquid starch painting


Spin art, love how these turned out! It's a popular and busy center.

We used the art table to make our homemade applesauce for snack, then got out dot paints.

Small Manipulatives

Pumpkin shape-matching mats (perfect review of last week) from Totschooling


Fall Pattern Cards


Lacing pumpkins and Flat marbles and pumpkin and apple dot pages from Totschooling


Magnet Board was Ten Little Apples Up on Top. I LOVE that this board made them curious about the book, because I got called here over and over to read this, and it either was followed by asking me to read something else, or them recreating the book on the magnet board.


Reading


Writing

Fall stickers


Fall/Halloween stencils

Texture rubbing plates


Snack

Day 1, we tasted red, yellow, and green apples, colored our favorite to hang in the tree, and graphed our results. (picture below in large group section)

Day 2, we had grape juice and grape jelly made from our own backyard grapes, and learned how they're juiced.

Day 3, we made and ate our own applesauce.

Outside

The sensory table was an "apple pie" mix with oatmeal,  cinnamon sticks, and toy apples/pom poms, plus cups and scoops. It was fun to watch them make muffins and cookies.


After 2 days, I changed it to this sensory fall mix (thanks Dollar Tree), that we also used the next week, so they had 3 days with this one. They loved sifting through for "treasures" (anything plastic and/or shiny).

Large Group

We learned the songs, Round and Round the Seasons Go, Leaves are Falling (they love this one because they get to throw leaves), and 5 Little Pumpkins.

Our word was deciduous, which is my favorite word to teach all year, and the one they often remember the best because it's so fun to say. Each day we watched a different Sesame Street video to help us learn the word.

The deciduous rap

Deciduous word on the street

Day 1, we played a leaf rhyming game and matched rhyming words. Raking Rhymes from Kelly's Kindergarten.

Day 2, we read about pumpkins, counted pumpkins, and decorated little pumpkins.

Day 3, we took a fall walk to find deciduous trees and signs of fall.

Small Group

My group made karo syrup leaves for our tree, and the others made leaves with the leaf rubbing plates.


My group counted apples with my apple counting mats (we're going to be practicing this A LOT), the other group colored an apple life cycle page. Counting mats are from Kelly's Kindergarten.

I can't tell you the guilt I feel when I send home what looks like a worksheet, but there's always a reason for anything I do. I honestly didn't care if they learned the apple life cycle by coloring it, because I doubt they did (worksheets don't work), but this group is still learning to work together without the teacher, and other tasks I've tried have required my interventions, leaving my group waiting. I value the small group learning time to help teach hard concepts on an individualized level, so I need the other group to be able to work alone. And the coloring went great!

Apples

Dramatic Play
Apple Orchard
This was a super fun center. Many of the kids recognized the trees from our Fall Dramatic Play center from last year, but I did change a few things. This was focused on the apple orchard, and I added the cash register stand too. They loved picking apples and pretending to make apple pie. The second week, I also added the apple ornaments we had used to stack in large group.



As for the "apples," I discovered last year that the sticky velcro didn't stay on the balls great, and would come off and stay on the tree, instead of staying on the ball. So this year I was reworking how to do it, and realized they stuck great to last year's sticky velcro, which was still there.  So instead of having one side of the velcro on the tree, and one on the ball, both pieces were stuck on the tree. The balls would stick to the sticky side and stay on the tree, and get pulled off easily too. Over the first few days, some started to lose their sticky side, so I just added some more.

Blocks
Duplo Legos
These are always a hit, and were busy for 2 days.
 
Bowling
This activity is a good one for patience and taking turns. I usually have to help set up the pins, since they get knocked down easily as they set them up, but they all tried to do it on their own. They did have to be helped taking turns, because they were fighting over the balls and cutting in line. So I lined them up, one would go, then that person had to help me set them up for the next person. There were only 3-4 in line when we started, but as others saw they weren't fighting anymore, more joined the line and they all got a chance to bowl. Later, they used the pins to whack the balls from the apple center around the room. Go figure.

There were also many puzzles available that were played with several times.

Art
Apple spin art
I cut out apples the size of the salad spinners, and they had watered down red, green, and yellow paint. They could use a spoon or medicine syringe to add paint to their apples, then they spun them. I barely had to help, they all got them spinning on their own. They turned out so great! A few let me keep theirs to hang in our tree a few more days.






Apple marble painting
I didn't cut out these apples, since the marbles would roll on the whole page anyway, but there was a printed apple on their paper. Again, we used red, green, and yellow paint, with spoons and marbles in them. They used the spoons to drop the marbles on their paper in the tray, then rolled them around. Some just rolled them a few times to get a few stripes, while others kept going until their whole page was covered. They turned out great too!
 


Apple condensed milk painting
I cut out larger apples for this one. I had sweetened condensed milk in a 6-muffin tin, and colored them red, green and yellow. Since this paint is so sticky, I covered the table in paper too. And I'm glad I did! There were paint trails everywhere. I love painting with this because it's a different texture and a fun sensory experience, but this is not art to keep long. It is a milk product, so the pictures get spots after a few days. I told the kids to take them home and show them off, then throw them away.

Apple stamping
We had to do this during 5 senses week too, since this was the cancelled day from my sick child. But they had been excited to do it, so we did. I just cut apples (ones from my mom's tree that weren't edible) in half, and we dipped them in paint and stamped our papers.

Small Manipulatives
Fall pattern cards

A is for Apples with flat marbles (from The Measured Mom)

Apple counting mats

ABC blocks

The magnet board had the 3 main characters from Ten Apples Up On Top, and red apple magnets to play with.

The pocket chart was flash cards matching numbers.

Writing
Apple dry erase boards

ABC stamps
Apple stickers

Snack
We tried so many different apples snacks this week, then graphed if we liked them or not. It was so much fun! The first day, we also graphed which color of apple was our favorite after trying 3 different kinds. Here are the yummy snacks we enjoyed:
Red, green, yellow apples slices
Apple Jacks
Freeze dried apples with cinnamon
Dried apples
Apple sauce
Apple juice
Apple muffins
Apple cider
Apple pie (this was the day we missed with my sick kids, so we waited and had it during 5 senses week)
Here are our graph results:


 


Outside
Sensory Table
It had oats and cinnamon sticks, plus red, yellow, and green pom pom balls to be like apples. I had thought about adding the plastic apples from my fall pattern cards, or the apple ornaments we used to stack, but we were always using them for something else.

Also, the diggers are back! You may not have noticed them missing, but they each had a broken bolt for the last few weeks. My husband replaced them this weekend and the kids are thrilled to have them back and working again!

Large Group
We learned a new song, 10 red apples. I have 10 red apples in our class tree, and I'd take them out as we'd sing and it subtracted apples. We learned lots of fun things we can make with apples.
 
Here's the lyrics:
10 red apples hanging in a tree.
Best looking apples I ever did see.
Gonna make apple pie for my friends and me,
9 red apples hanging in a tree.

It goes on as they count down and they make apple cider, applesauce, apple jelly, apple muffins, apple strudel, apple juice, baked apple, and apple fritters. Last verse:

1 red apple hanging in a tree.
Best looking apple I ever did see.
Only 1 apple left, oh my oh me.
No more apples, hanging in a tree.

Day 1, we read Ten Apples Up on Top. I put the kids in 2 groups and gave them some apple ornaments and play dough, and they had to work together to see how tall they could stack their apples. The tallest we got was 5. It was a challenge to do it and work together, but with a lot of encouragement, they did it!



Day 2, we made apple boats after we read about apples. We watched our apple halves float, then made sails on bamboo skewers. They made them lopsided and tip over, but they still had fun making them.

Day 3, we wrote in our journals about our favorite way to eat an apple.

Day 4, we were supposed to color and cut out the 4 steps in the life cycle of a tree and glue them to a headband, but that was our cancelled sick day. :(

Small Group
I may have explained this already, but I only have Miss Kim on Thursdays this year. But I've still wanted to do small groups on Tuesdays, so I have 1 group work independently while 1 works with me, and they've done great!
One group worked independently on apple counting mats (from Kelly's Kindergarten), while I worked with the other on writing in their journals. We had run out of time last week to journal our favorite nursery rhyme, so now we're all caught up.

The next Tuesday, one group worked on puzzles, while the next group came to me two at a time, to make their Ten Apples Up on Top names. They were so excited about it! I only took two at a time so I could observe them and give them enough help. Some didn't need any help, while others weren't sure of the order of the letters, so I had them get their name magnet from the hall and follow the letters on that. They did great with that help, and didn't need me to tell them what came next. I just helped name letters they didn't know.

With Miss Kim, one group worked on the apple counting mats with her, so she could double check their counting. The other group worked with me on patterns. We made patterns from my red and green apples, then colored it in on our paper. Since we didn't have that other Thursday for the second group to do it, we'll catch up on it next week.