Apples and Oranges - Harvest Time!

We read Pumpkin Harvest by Martha E. Rustad which is the perfect length and just the right amount of information about pumpkins for two- year-olds.

Then everyone got a pumpkin on a stick for our The Pumpkins Are Here song and activity from The Mailbox Magazine. It goes like this to the tune of The Farmer in the Dell:

The pumpkins are here, the pumpkins are there.
The pumpkins, the pumpkins are everywhere!
The pumpkins are up, the pumpkins are down
The pumpkins, the pumpkins are all around!
The pumpkins are in, the pumpkins are out
The pumpkins are all about!
The pumpkins are low, the pumpkins are high
Now all the pumpkins wave good-bye!

We read Apple Harvest by Martha E. Rustad as well!

We did a Apple Tree fingerplay:
Way up high in the apple tree (two hands in air)
Two little apples smiled at me
I shook that tree as hard as I could (shake)
Down came the apples (hands come down)
UMMMMMM!UMMMMM! Good! (rub tummy)

I used props as well- green, red and yellow apples to talk about colors and lead to my next activity. Got these from a clipart book and they ARE actually smiling :)

Next, we went apple picking by colors. I taped up a bunch of green, yellow and red apples on the walls and had my little library friends find 1 green apple, 1 red apple and 1 yellow apple and put them in my bushel basket!

 

There's a cute song you can sing to the tune of Frere Jacques: Picking apples, picking apples, one by one, one by one, put them in the basket, put them in the basket Oh, what fun! Oh, what fun!

 

We read Apples & Pumpkins by Anne Rockwell.

Then each family received a pumpkin seed counting sheet and a dish of pumpkin seeds to count and eat!

We talked about all the yummy things you can make with apples and pumpkins. The we finished off with some tasty treats- apple juice and pumpkin cookies!

And for the grand finale, we went to the pumpkin patch so each child could pick out their very own pumpkin to take home!

For take home, the families were apple to take materials to make a apple wreath and two small booklets- 1 about apples and 1 about pumpkins (Mailbox Magazine)

We had lots of fun!