Last week, the preschool classrooms’ theme was apples. I saw this pin from Moments of Mommyhood and I knew I needed to adapt it for therapy.
I started with these materials:
red paint, a glue stick, brown construction paper cut into short and long rectangles, and half an apple with a “handle” (plastic utensil jammed in it!)
Putting the paint and apple on the inside of a cardboard box worked a little better than a paper plate, if you can find one.
Each student got to pick a a paper to start with. I had yellow and pink as a choice, because they were light choices and I wanted the paint to show up well. I learned it was better to write my title first, so I wasn’t putting my forearm in wet paint by doing it after the project was finished. The title read, “(Student’s) apples are in the basket.” For this project, we focused on the concept of “in”.
Each student stamped 3-4 apple prints somewhere in the center of their page.
From there, we worked on short vs. long, using the brown rectangles. This is great for using adjective-noun phrases: brown rectangle, short rectangle, long rectangle, etc.
Next, we glued two long rectangles on the left and right sides of the group of apples. They need to sort of angle in toward the bottom, so it can look more like a basket.
Then we put a short rectangle on the bottom and a long one across the top, making sure to connect the left and right sides.
One more rectangle in the middle and your basket is done! (Some rectangles may need a little trimming in order to fit in the middle and not go beyond the sides.) Here’s a great opportunity to target top, middle, and bottom.
Here are the finished products:
Pretty cute, right?! After we were done, we worked on “where” questions, sequenced our steps, and reinforced the basic concepts we had targeted (short/long, top/middle/bottom).
Enjoy!
