This activity involves both cognitive development (patterning) as well as fine motor development (coloring, cutting, and gluing). It was also great practice for learning to color inside of the lines. It was like pulling teeth to get Big Brother to finish coloring all the apples…but he loved cutting them!
Here’s what you’ll need: white paper, a black marker, a red and a green crayon, child-safe scissors, and glue.
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| 1. Draw 6 apples on 2 pieces of paper. |
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| 2. Let your little one begin coloring. We used the Jumbo-size crayons. |
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| We’re still working on staying in the lines, but he did a great job! |
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| 4. Let your child cut the apples out with the safety scissors. Just 2 months ago, Big Brother had a major tantrum when I tried to get him to cut. This time he had when I tried to get him to stop! I held the paper and guided it while he cut. |
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| 5. Sort–put all the red apples in one pile and the green apples in another. |
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| 6. Let your little one put glue on the back of each apple. |
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| 7. We made a “Green, Red, Green, Red” pattern since this is the simplest. You can make whatever pattern you like. I helped Big Brother with the first three and then I would repeat the pattern (green, red, green…) and let him guess what would come next. I was pleasantly surprised that he successfully predicted each one! |
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| All Done… |
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| But Big Brother wanted to continue. We had a few apples left over and another piece of brown paper, so he created this one COMPLETELY on his own. :) |
Thanks for all the wonderful ideas!
LOVED doing this with my kindergarten students and will dust off our apple pattern next week so my little guy gets a shot.
great! thanks
We have done similar things. My kindergartener (1st week in K) is a smarty pants and tells me look I did an AB or AABB, or ABC pattern after she has patterned with whatever manipulatives we had out. I used the term once a few months ago and now she uses it with all her patterning. My jaw droped the first time she patterend the colored bears (green, red, green, red, green…) and said, “Mom look an ABAB patten.” Then she used the letter names for all her patterns correctly. I think she will do well in algebra. ;) So cute.
Cute! We are using his idea to make a 4th of Jul decoration. He colored stars blue an red. Tomorrow he will glue them to a white construction paper banner. We had to make it a two day craft bc my little guy is not one to sit down for long. Also he is no ready to cut the angles with the scissors.