As part of our fun with apples, I thought it would be a good time to set out our homemade red play dough and invite the children to practice their skill of rolling the play dough to make apples for our apple tree…
I created a tree with bare branches out of tape on our magnet board. On top of the tree, I added some red homemade play dough (made and donated to us by one of our parents) and cut-up brown pipe cleaners (Chenille Stems)…
Here’s another game using pipe cleaners that helps develop fine motor skills
The children used their hands to roll the dough into apples and then added the pipe cleaners for the stems. Once they had an apple ready to go, they found a spot on our tree to place the apple…
Some of the children would stop by the table and stay for quite awhile rolling dough and making apples while others would stop by for just a few minutes and then move on…
I loved how the apple tree naturally invited the children to work their hands to roll the play dough especially since rolling play dough into balls can be quite challenging for young children…
We had all sizes and shapes of apples added to our tree by the end of the day…
Including this extra large apple. I wouldn’t want to be standing under the tree when this apple falls off the branch…
And one of my students had the brilliant idea of bringing over our scales to weigh their play dough apples which added a new dimension of play to our apple tree table…
And as you know, when one child comes up with a fun idea, more children will want to give it a try too…
I never know where an idea will lead but it is always fun to watch my students take an idea and do something I wouldn’t have thought of…
PS. You can read more about the Magnet Board being used for this activity here!
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