Apple Picking Sight Word Activity!

We’ve been having all sorts of chaos fun this year in our homeschooling adventures.

Remember, we’re doing preschool for a three year old and kindergarten for a five and a half year old. So the days can be “busy” to put it mildly!

We’re six weeks into the school year and I already feel the need to switch things up a bit, get the kids moving around with more hands on activities.

Plus I want them to learn together, and so I look for ways to have them learn similar concepts at the same time.

So my oldest is learning to read (phonics and sight words) with Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons, and my littlest is learning to identify numbers 1-5 and the letters in his name (so far!). These learning objectives seemed similar enough to me to meld into one learning activity.

Which went over so well that I have to share it with you all!

Apple Picking Sight Word Activity

Materials:

• Posterboard – brown and green (this is totally optional – you could just put the apples on a bare wall. But I could not resist the opportunity to craft a quick little tree!).
• Apple cutouts – cut out your own or get die-cut ones like for calendars (Dollar Stores often have them)
• Markers (brown, green, black)
• Alphabet stickers and numbers (optional – I used these letter stickers)
• Sticky Tack (my favorite!! You could use masking or painter’s tape too)

Directions:

Draw a tree trunk on the brown poster board and cut out. Trace edges with brown markers to make it stand out.

Draw a puffy leaf ball for the top of the tree on the green poster board and cut out. Trace with green markers to make it stand out.

Write 10 sight words on 10 paper apples.

Write numbers 1-5 on 5 apples and put each letter in your child’s name on more apples. (I read somewhere to start teaching the alphabet NOT A-B-C but with the child’s name letters because those are important to the child).

Use tiny dots of sticky tack to affix the tree to the wall. Or just use a bare wall. Affix apples randomly all over tree.

To Play:

Have children read an apple in order to “pick” it from the tree. The boys mostly knew which apples were theirs. I had to guide my three year old to certain ones.

How did the Apple Picking Sight Words Activity go in real life!?

The boys literally SHRIEKED with excitement when they came downstairs to find an apple tree had grown in our learning room! My oldest, so wise, shouted, “Look what MOMMY DID!” (he’s catching on, isn’t he!?).

They were eager to play!

Surprisingly, I thought this would be too easy for them, but I guess seeing the sight words written out by hand made the activity a bit more challenging for my older son and he had to do a little work to sound them out (which is good practice!).

My three year old also needed a little guidance to get all the apples but I can tell he’s gaining more skill at recognizing the letters and numbers easily.

All in all, it was a short activity of about ten minutes to get them through each of their ten cards, and they enjoyed each minute. I think my oldest could’ve done a bit more and my youngest was just about done, so that is perfect timing to me.

And for the really minimal work this involved (the tree was easy, seriously!), it’s a great reusable activity. We’ll play this again a few more times with these cards, and when it gets too easy, I will write out new cards for them to read!

Perhaps I can switch to leaves for November, and snowflakes for December and January!

PIN THIS–>> Be sure to pin this Sight Word Activity to your Preschool or Homeschooling Pinterest board to use later!

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