If you are doing a study of apples, or on trees in general, you should really consider using the book, The Apple Pie Tree, by Zoe Hall. This wonderfully illustrated book follows a single apple tree, and the two girls who love it, through the seasons, until its fruit can finally be picked, chopped, and baked into a perfect apple pie. It is a great illustration of the cycle of seasons, as well as the process of making pie!
Understanding the cycle of seasons is a pretty obvious science objective, but learning to put things in an ordered series also builds cognitive and language skills that lay the foundation for reading and writing (beginning, middle, end) while also contributing to preschool math and problem-solving skills.
Tell me I’m not the only mother with a two year old who thinks the best thing to do with five boxes of puzzles is to put them all into one bucket together. Luckily for me, I learned at a university lab preschool, that it is very handy to number the backs of your puzzle pieces to help out in just such a situation. Each time I get a new puzzle, I write a number on the box and then write that number on the back of each piece. Then, say when I find two random puzzle pieces mysteriously stuffed into the only VCR left in our house, I can quickly determine which boxes to return them to. Now if only fixing the VCR was that easy!
