Easy Apple Activities for the Classroom: Writing, Math and More!

Easy Apple Activities for the Classroom

You know fall is upon us when you start seeing apples everywhere you go! They’re in the grocery stores, the craft stores, on menus, and all over our schools. Many of the kids in our classrooms have apples in their lunches, which often leads to lunch table discussions about the different colors, where they were purchased, who likes apples, and how they like to eat them. These conversations are the perfect starting point for all kinds of apple activities in the classroom. And, of course, there are always one or two kiddos in the room who don’t like apples at all!

These discussions lead to some great learning opportunities! Over the years, we have tasted and graphed our favorite apples and talked about all the different ways we like to eat them. Apples have even become a theme for our math practice and our writing. They really are a sweet way to support learning!

Apple Taste Test and Graphing

We begin our apple tasting activity with—tasting! I cut up a few different kinds of apples, preferably in different colors, and have students taste them one by one. After they have tried them all, they record their favorite on a recording sheet. We then use everyone’s choices to create a class graph and/or individual graphs.

And, of course, what activity is complete without some writing? Students write about which type of apple is their favorite and why. Kids love tasting the different apples, and some are genuinely surprised by how many varieties there are—and that they actually taste different!

And for the kiddo who doesn’t like to eat apples at all? They can simply choose the color of apple they like best.

Ready to have an apple taste test of your own? Grab the printables for tasting, graphing, comparing data, and writing about your students’ favorite apples.

💚 Apple Graphing Activities: Taste Test, Data & Writing

Our Favorite Ways to Eat an Apple

I wanted to take our apple tasting to the next level. Instead of just asking, “Which apple do you like best?” I wanted to know, “How do you like to eat your apples?” Applesauce? Caramel apples—my favorite! Apple juice? Apple pie? Those are just a few of the possibilities.

So, I whipped up some activities to find out exactly how my students like to eat their apples. And if there is still a naysayer who doesn’t like apples at all, well, they can simply choose something that looks like fun to write about!

We begin this series of activities with a “brain dump” where we brainstorm all the possible ways to eat an apple. It’s amazing to hear what kids come up with! I mean, apple fruit leather? I never would have thought of that!

After making our list, students choose their all-time favorite way to eat an apple and complete a planning sheet explaining why it’s their favorite. Then they use their ideas to write about it on the apple writing paper. Finally, we create a class graph showing our favorite ways to eat apples and take a look at what our class data tells us.

Ready to find out how your students like to eat their apples? Grab the printables for brainstorming, planning, writing, graphing, and exploring your class data.

💚 Our Favorite Ways to Eat an Apple: Writing & Graphing Activities

Apple Number Bonds Game

To play this festive apple-themed game, students move around the game board picking and completing number bonds while collecting—and sometimes losing!—apples along the way. When the game is over, students count the apples in their baskets, and the player with the most apples wins!

It’s a simple way to give students repeated practice with number bonds and the part-part-whole concept while having fun with a partner.

💚 Apple Number Bond Game: Fall Math Centers & Part-Part-Whole Practice

Apple Sentence-Level Writing Skills

Teaching students how to write sentences is an incredibly important part of every grade. We need to explicitly teach sentence-level writing skills, or we end up with students in fourth and fifth grade who still struggle to write a complete sentence—and, in turn, struggle to write paragraphs and more complex pieces.

In first grade, we focus on skills such as sentence types, sentences and fragments, using question words, expanding responses with because, but, and so, extending sentences with question words, combining sentences with and, but, and so, and unscrambling scrambled sentences.

There are lots of ways to practice these sentence-level writing skills. We could use worksheet after worksheet filled with random topics that don’t connect to students’ everyday experiences, OR we can embed that practice in what students are already learning about and what is happening in the world around them.

Hence, the apple theme! Fall and apples give us a familiar, kid-friendly topic we can use to practice all of these important sentence-writing skills.

Using a familiar theme makes sentence-level writing practice feel much more connected to what is already happening in the classroom. These apple-themed activities provide practice with all of the skills above and more.

💚 Apples: Sentence-Level Writing Skills Activitie s

FREE Apple Word Search

Looking for one more apple activity? Grab this FREE Apple Word Search for a quick and easy addition to your fall activities. It’s perfect for morning work, early finishers, or just for fun!