One of my favorite themes in preschool and kindergarten has always been apples. There are so many different things you can do with apples that are hands-on: apple stamping, apple graphing, apple sorting, and apple tasting!
I recently made a back-to-school fine motor pack and I had lots of fun making an apple-themed pack as well. I kept some of the same types activities as the back-to-school pack but made them apple-themed. If you are having students do these activities independently at centers or in morning tubs, you’ll appreciate the repetition as it helps students build independence.
Here’s a look at the ten activities in the apple fine motor pack:
1. Paper Tearing: Paper tearing is a great finger strengthening activity. Provide your students with 1- or 2-inch strips of paper to tear with.
2. Cutting Activities: There are a couple different choices. First, there’s a simple one-snip apple seed activity. Students can cut the seeds by simply cutting once on the lines between the seeds. Then they can glue the seeds onto an apple. Also, I made some puzzles with different types of cutting lines. I suggest cutting out around the puzzles and letting students cut them apart, but if your students are more advanced, you may be able to just give them the whole page. Add more to the activity by having students color, cut out, reassemble, and then glue the puzzle onto a half-sheet of construction paper.
3. Pinning: As with the back-to-school pinning activities, remember that if your students just aren’t ready to use jumbo push-pins yet, that’s ok! It’s early in the school year. You can definitely have students trace the dotted outlines instead of pinning. If your students are ready to work with jumbo push pins, have them sit on the carpet and carefully poke the holes on each of the images.
4. Tracing/Hole Punching: Most kids I know are excited to use hole punchers, and hole punchers are great for building hand strength. I’ll link the hole puncher I love in the Amazon links below. In this activity, students can trace the picture and then punch around the picture on the dots.
5. Line Tracing: Line tracing cards are great for reinforcing correct pencil grasp and working on hand control. There are simple lines and more complicated lines, so print and prep what your students need. I laminate these and have students use dry-erase markers.
6. Tweezing: For this activity, there is a color sorting option and a counting option. Use whatever cards you’d like! I use pom-poms and jumbo plastic tweezers.
7. Playdough: There are multiple options for this activity. It’s designed to practice rolling “snakes” from playdough. Then students can use playdough-safe scissors to cut pieces to put on the mats. You can vary this activity in lots of ways. You can have students pull pieces of playdough off instead of cutting them. You can also just have students roll and shape the playdough.
9. Stickers: In this activity, students will put small stickers on the outlines of the pictures and words. I’ll link my favorite stickers below!
10. Clipping: In the last activity, students will count the apples and clip the number that shows how many. I use mini clothespins for these cards.