Apple Tasting Activity for Preschool

I usually do this apple tasting activity as a circle time lesson, but I am teaching remote preschool right now, so I reconfigured this to be an at-home activity that children could do with their families that can then be shared during a group activity. With this age group, zoom meetings can be chaotic, but interaction is vital for engagement and building community. One way to calm the chaos but keep engagement up is with activities that can be done as a group without requiring every child to use their mic. Activities like this apple tasting activity with synchronous and asynchronous elements can be bridges between the work at home and group lessons.

This post contains an affiliate link.

Gather your materials. You will need this printable, two or more colors of apples, crayons in those same colors, and a knife. For remote learning, I sent home apples and the printable.

In a class, slice the apple with your students. I like getting our kid-safe knives and letting them chop the slices into smaller bits.

After tasting, both the red and green apples, have your students fill out the printable. If they need help writing the color word help, but encourage the children to write even if what they write doesn’t look like letters yet. Color the apple the same color as the apple they think tasted the best.

If you plan to use this for a synchronous activity like I do, here are your next steps.

Prepare a basic graph. Using paper and marker.

Use post-it notes to write the student’s names on. Keep these handy because you will be using them live during your zoom call.

Alert the parents that they need to complete this activity before your zoom meeting and have the sheet on hand as well.

At the start of the zoom meeting, ask your students to wave it to show you they have it and give the grown-ups tie to go grab it if they don’t. Show your students the basic graph and explain that a graph is a way to sort and display information. In this case, which color of apple your class thinks tastes the best.

Now go student by student – hold up the post-it with their name and say, ” I have Juan’s name in my hand. Juan, can you hold up your sheet and show us what color of apple you think tastes best? I see you colored your apple green. I’ll put your name in the green column. Repeat.

The reason I use their names to vote is that I am trying to reinforce name recognition as well as understanding that each student gets to vote once. That is their one vote.

After all, the names are on the board, count each side as a group, and determine which color of apple has the most votes for the best-tasting apple.

Apple Books for Preschool

There are so many great books about apples for preschool. These are great books to read before or after this apple tasting activity. My favorite is Apple Farmer Annie, but there are many more great ones in this booklist.