Inside: A preschool apple activity for practicing alphabet letter matching and lowercase letter tracing.

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When I think of fall, I picture late afternoon sunlight bouncing off fall foliage. I imagine brisk, cool morning air and fresh hot apple cider. I daydream about apple picking and hay rides, too.

Unfortunately, I live in southeast Texas now.

Our leaves change at Christmas time, and I’ve never seen an apple tree here. When the rest of the U.S. is enjoying cool autumn mornings and warm, lovely afternoons, we’re still sweating it out in the heat and humidity of summer.

I’ll just have to dream…

Preschool Apple Activity

First of all, let’s start this preschool apple activity with a couple fresh apple read-alouds.

My two newest favorites are the engaging nonfiction book Apples for Everyone by Jill Esbaum, and the fun detective story Apples for Little Fox by Ekaterina Trukhan (affiliates).

RELATED: Back to School Books for Classroom Read Alouds

Once you’ve set the tone, your kids will surely be eager for some apple theme activities. This one is pretty simple . . .

 

Apple Alphabet Activity – Preparation

I created apple seed lowercase letters for your preschoolers or early kindergartners to trace.

These free printable A-Z apple alphabet cards are super easy for you to prep. Just cut out and laminate the cards so your students can trace the lower case letters with a dry erase marker.

Apple Alphabet Activity – Instructions

When you’re ready to introduce the activity, talk first about apple seeds. Perhaps cut open an apple or two and observe the seeds.

Then, you can point out how these silly cards have apple seeds in the shape of letters. Won’t it be fun to connect them to form letters!

The simplest way to play is to just match the letter cards and then trace the lowercase letters. The apples come in 3 colors. The matching lowercase and uppercase letters match in color as well, which makes it easier for newer learners.

Apple Literacy Center Ideas

If you’d like, you can add an element of play to use this apple activity in a literacy center, station, or small group. Here are a few more ideas on how to make these activity cards as engaging as possible for your preschoolers or early kindergartners:

• Use Velcro® or magnets to attach the lowercase letter cards to a smallish tree bulletin board set (affiliate). Students can “pick” the apples off the tree and match them to the uppercase letter cards.

(Side note: I used to have the best tree in my classroom… I had it in storage in my garage and lost it in Hurricane Harvey. We were so lucky that we didn’t lose too much, and had flood insurance, but ouch – I miss my tree!)

• Line the cards up in a pocket chart, and provide a little apple picking basket to put them into as students match the cards. Or, students can line up letters to spell their names or simple words.

• Lay several pairs of cards face down and play concentration with them. When the children make a match they can trace the lowercase letter.

• Add in a fine motor color matching activity by setting out tongs and a basket of red, yellow and green pompoms. As students pair up the cards, they then pick out a pompom in the matching color and place it on the uppercase letter. The same setup also works well to practice pattern matching.

Download the Apple ABC Cards

Ready for the free apple seed letter cards?

To get your very own copy, you can sign up right here:

I’ll add you to my weekly-ish newsletter too – it’s full of ideas and more free printables. Of course, you can unsubscribe at any time.

I can almost feel the cooler autumn weather, sitting here in my air conditioning. We’ve never been apple picking, but we did once visit a peach orchard. We brought back more than we could possibly eat because my kids had so much fun picking.

We made an awesome pie with some of the extra fruit, though.

I know, that’s not the same thing… For now, I’ll have to be happy pretending and imagining with this little preschool apple activity.

Enjoy!

-Heather