Fifth Day of Apples

For the last day of our Apple Week, I have prepared two arts and crafts activities that I think Lia would love. The past four days have been really wonderful, and she is starting to get used to it day by day. We started Day 5, sorting out our puzzle pieces from Confessions of a Homeschooler. It was a 6-piece puzzle that I laminated. Lia wasn't really focused on doing it and she has not perceived what the concept is, so I put them altogether and showed her the picture it revealed:

And then, she did this:

All she wanted was to jumble them altogether on a tray...oops!

I'm quite excited about our first ever lacing activity for this day. I printed out an apple, huge enough, laminated it, cut it to its form, and punched holes on the sides. Lia was to lace this piece of string back and forth the holes. 

We did it together, and then she would insist that it's her turn. It's something new, so it must have been really exciting for her to try! I explained that the string was to go in and out of the holes. I held the apple card for her at times.  Apparently, in the middle of it, she found that it was too funny to stretch the string and see the apple card jiggle!

{too bad, this is the only picture I have that shows she is actually doing it!}

Too funny!

After she was done with it, I introduced the arts and crafts activities of the day. I couldn't choose between the handprint activity, or tracing her arm for the apple tree, so we did both! After I traced her arm, I cut the outline of it and showed it to her. She was in awe to see her hand in paper, that she exclaimed: "wow, hands Mama!" So I let her glue everything altogether, including the red circles as apples. It was really, really cute!

 Here comes the favorite part... glue!

 Fine motor muscles at work...

and so focused!

Tada!

Next, we made the handprint tree. I painted her palm with green washable paint and pressed them onto the paper, making it look like leaves. She said the paint was cold. Then she finished off with little apple marks using Q-tips. While she was busy, I read the book "Ten Red Apples" by Pat Hutchins. 

It revealed a beautiful apple tree!

We finally ended the session trying to shoot the apples in a basket. Lia finds it very funny that the apple {the plastic one} actually bounces on the floor rug when she threw it too hard! 

By the way, these were our projects for the whole week:

This is our wrap-up for the apple week! We both enjoyed it very much and hope to have inspired you today!

For the next week, I have decided to do one theme a day. It will be more challenging and added work for me, but at this point, I realized that exposing my little girl to so many things would be beneficial. Sure, we had fun doing all these things for the apple week, but I think exposure to new and different things everyday would be so much better for learning!