"Let's Open the Window" The Mungle Family: Apples!

I grew up in Michigan and every fall we helped my dad pick apples from the little orchard of 9 trees in the front yard while my mom made applesauce or apple crisp. Now, with children of my own, for at least 1 week in September, we study apples and celebrate our incredible Creator, God! This year was extra special because my parents were here for a few days of our apple unit!

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Bible story topics: God made fruit trees on Day 3 (Genesis 1:11-13)
                                The fruit of the Spirit (Galations 5:22)
                                 Adam and Eve and the "fruit" (Genesis 3)
                                 Bearing Fruit (John 15:5)
                                 Parable of the Seeds (Luke 8:1-15)
                                 Do a Bible word search for "apple" here.
                                        (Notice the phrase "Apple of my/your/his eye" used 4x).

            I hope you'll find the pictures and links helpful and time-saving as you study apples!

Here's our activity shelf #1. The top shelf is for Jack, the middle is for him too, but safe for Callie to play with. The bottom shelf is for Callie.

"Apples" book (a $1 garage sale find) covers the life cycle of apples, nutrition, origins, as well as historical
characters like Johnny Appleseed. The craft supplies on the right are paint,paint brushes and toilet paper tubes to
stamp and paint an apple picture like the one hanging in the background.

Parts of an Apple Chart, A-P-P-L-E song cards, apple book printable, sequencing cards from Kidsssoup, play doh apple molds, and a fantastic book called "Fruit" with picture overlays (bought for $1 at a garage sale!) Click here for more cute apple cards! Or click here to make apple pie scented play-doh.

Book: "God Make Apples", "Apple Picking" from Kidssoup, play doh to make apples for each circle. Pre-writing worksheet: tracing a line through the fruits (you could use stickers and draw a light colored line to trace).

Callie making play-doh apples as soon as she woke up.

Jack dissecting an apple to locate all of the parts: Core, Stem, Skin, Flesh, Seeds, Seed Covering

Apple Stamping! She loved this!


Use a bent toilet paper tube dipped in paint to stamp the shape of an apple.

Activity Shelf #2

Preschool shelf: Sorting different colored cut-out apples and pom-pom apples.

Life Cycle of an Apple: the green apple is a pouch that I knit and inside it are 3-part cards. The file folder is a math puzzle match up and the"Pattern Cards" on the right use the apples in the bowl to continue the pattern. (I think these were from Kidssoup too, but here's a freebie).


Activity shelf #3

We learned a lot with the Fruit section of our "Apologia Botany" book. Pumpkins and squash are really fruits! We used this sticker garden set from Oriental Trading to place the real vegetables together. Jack designate a garden section for just the fruits. The cards on the right were a free printable but I can't find the link.

Easy Reader book: "Apple Picking" and "God Made the World" purchased at McKay's for .25 cents. The worksheet hanging up is a printable found here that uses coordinates and coloring to make an apple (but don't tell the student it's an apple- let . The apple cards have a number and since Jack is older I had him write the word in the apple (last year he drew the correct number of seeds instead).

Activity Shelf #4

Sorting fruits with Hi-Ho Cherry-O. (A Christmas present from Aunt Katie!) Cutting out "fruits of the spirit" worksheet from kid's Wednesday night class. Here is a similar printable coloring sheet.

"Adam and Eve" puzzle from the company Melissa and Doug (but I got it 90% off from at a store closing sale). This bi-lingual book came in the mail from the "Imagination Library." Sign up here for this wonderful (and free) program. The apple stick is a craft stick with a circle on it. We painted this with glitter glue last year and use it to point to words in the books.

Sorting 3 colors of apples, and using fine motor skills to place the worms in the apple. I got this game on clearance at TJ Maxx for $1. We don't use it as the game suggests; Callie places the worms in the holes which is a great way to build the muscles of the"pincher grasp."

Activity shelf #5

This is a free printable. Each person gets a tree card and draws an apple. If it belongs on your tree you get to keep it. The first person to get 10 apples is the winner. The extra paper is for the child or parent to write their own numbers.

This is an old puzzle! It has the months and the days around the sun (which I also used with our Apologia study of the sun). The card to the left has trivia questions about apples. I added the blocks because the red, yellow, and green reminded me off apples or apple slices (bought for $3 at Marshall's). The card on the bottom left is an apple life cycle bracelet using a pipe cleaner and beads to make a visual display of how and apple grows (and have the child talk their way through it).

The little pieces of fruit from Hi Ho Cherry-O fit into the apple game.
I used a little wooden spool as a stamper (I thought it looked like an apple core) to stamp the apple worksheet (that came as a set from Oriental Trading on clearance but is now discontinued.) They go with the dilly-dot markers- similar to do-a-dot markers).

The kids doing their math together. He's writing 1-100 and she's stamping up to 100 times:)

Activity Shelf #6

My mom gave me this nutmeg grater with whole nutmegs. We grated some fresh nutmeg for a pie. The Parable book on the right came from Dollar Tree.

Thanks Nana for the book "The Apple Pie that Papa Baked."
Thank you Susie for the little vintage cook-top stove.
Callie had a lot of fun baking and smelling nutmeg, cinnamon, allspice, and cloves.
We also compared the 2 types of apples and filled in the chart using our 5 senses.

Here's little sis ladling apples for applesauce.
(The girl loves pink.....even if it doesn't match:)

The game on the left is a picture BINGO game ($2 on clearance at TJ Maxx). It's a double-sided game with picture on one side and words on the other- perfect for a 2 year old and 6 year old!
Another dilly-dot worksheet from the set I mentioned above.
The "Squiggly Worms"apple game again: this time we sorted the worms by color.

Here she is sorting the worms. Click here for more free APPLE printables.
I found an adorable sensory bin and other great ideas here.
More apple and Math printables.

Activity Shelf #7

Learning about Washington (the largest apple growing state in the USA).
Experiment: observing an apple "brown."
Singing along with the book "America the Beautiful."

Fruits of the Spirit: scrambled word find (from an activity book).
Word Bingo (as seen above with Callie). Apple seed transferring with tongs.
Apples in a barrel (for the fractions poster activity). Check out this apple barrel math printable.

Cutting fruit (a Christmas gift from Nana and Papa last year)
Transferring "apples" (colored plastic marbles).

This poster was also on clearance at Oriental Trading. It's used with dry erase markers and we attached the apples with sticky putty.
This book "Apple Fractions" looks really cute!

Counting cantelope seeds.
Be sure to check out THIS free sample of the Botany book from Apologia!

Sharing "fruit" during our Bible study on scattering seeds and bearing fruit.

Counting by two's with your feet.

Every time you land you add 2 more.

It was easier to see for him to skip count to 100 by seeing these numbers.

Odd and Even game (scroll up for the link to print this).

Introducing her to numbers- these are Sandpaper numbers.

Transferring marble apples was easy.

Transferring apple seeds was harder...

So she picked up the bowl and poured the seeds into the other- hahaha!

Picture Bingo for her.

Activity Shelf #8

Learning more about Washington state, counting "seeds" by two's,
comparing seeds, and reading a parable of the sower and the seeds.

Here's an close-up of the seed comparisons. The seeds of 1 cantelope vs. the seeds of 1 apple.

This is an apple bag that holds 1/2 peck of apples. I filled it with all of our apple books that we've read so far. Callie's fruit cutting set was used as fraction practice for Jack.
The book is "Apple Cider Days" (.25 cents at McKay's). "What's Wrong" with the picture, worksheet.