Apples Face Matching for Preschoolers
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Matching is one of the most important activities you can do with your preschoolers, and since apples are typically harvested during Fall, I created this FREE Apple Face Matching activity for them to practice this skill.
This set includes three different pages of matching mats and two pages of the corresponding apples, for a total of twelve different apple faces. You can get it at the end of this post.
Apples Face Matching Activity
Matching face activities require preschoolers to identify patterns, similarities, and differences, helping them develop a wide range of important skills such as visual discrimination, emotional recognition, and fine motor skills, creating the foundations for later concepts.
- Visual Discrimination: Children are encouraged to notice small differences and similarities in eyes, noses, and mouth shapes.
- Fine Motor Control: Selecting, picking up, and placing apple face cards accurately involve working on the small muscles of their hands and fingers.
- Hand-Eye Coordination: When they observe specific apple faces and use their hand movements to place them in the correct spot.
- Language and Vocabulary: Learning to identify and name the facial expressions on the apples.
- Attention and Focus: They have to focus and concentrate to scan, compare, and pair matching features.
- Emotion Recognition: Encourage children to identify different expressions represented in the apple faces, like happy, sad, or angry, which builds early empathy and self-concept.
- Self-Awareness: Recognizing feelings in their own expressions and the expressions in others.
How to Get the Activity Ready
To get these cards ready, you only need a handful of materials, which are:
- Your FREE Apples Face Matching printable (found below).
- Printer.
- White paper or cardstock.
- Laminator and laminating sheets.
- Scissors or paper cutter.
Print the pages, cut them out, and laminate them for durability. Have the children match the colorful pictures with their black-and-white mirrors. You can also use these cards to play a memory-matching game, having the children place the cards upside down and trying to find the matching pair.
Just take into consideration your children’s different levels of development, and use all or fewer cards accordingly.
Books About Apples
These are some Apple-related books. You can find them at your local library, a used bookstore, or on Amazon. For your convenience, I added my direct Amazon links to the titles. If you like any, click it to go directly to the site.
- Ten Happy Apples by Artin Action is a rhyme about an apple and his friends who have fun playing and adventuring. It is designed to help small children count from one to ten with straightforward text that utilizes sight words to promote early reading habits.
- Five Little Apples by Yusuke Yunezu features basic math concepts, friendly, smiling animals, and a bold, bright, kid-friendly design.
- Apple Pie Time by D. D. Glover incorporates visualizing through all the senses and practices counting through meaningful, beautiful illustrations.
- Mr. Bear’s Apple Tree: A Magical Counting Book by A. J. Wood tells the story of Mr. Bear, who counts the apples on his tree as some hungry bees eat them, one by one.
- Aria Picks Ten Apples by Crystal L. Gantt is an interactive counting book that teaches both number and number name recognition through visual imagery, set against the beautiful backdrop of an apple orchard.
- Ten Red Apples by Pat Hutchins teaches how to count from 1 to 10 using pretty apples.
- Apple Tree, Apple Tree, What Do You See? by Sharon Reyford helps preschoolers count from 1 to 10 and includes a few activity pages to reinforce number learning and handwriting.
- Apple Countdown by Joan Holub: This creative countdown, from 20 to 1, includes grouping and simple additions. The inside cover of this cheerful book is filled with apple facts.
- Ten Apples Up on the Top! by Leo LeSieg teaches kids to count to ten with a dose of signature Seuss charm.
Pin It For Later
If you are in a rush and don’t have time to read the post and download the printable, pin this to one of your boards on Pinterest for later.
Don’t forget to grab your FREE Apples Face Matching activity below. Just type your email for an immediate download. It will subscribe you to my weekly newsletter, where you will receive freebies every time.
I hope you and your preschoolers enjoy this activity and have tons of fun learning.
Be happy, safe, and creative. I wish you well.
Love,
P.S. Please let me know if this activity works for you. My goal is to help you in any way I can, and I don’t like anything better than posting something you might find useful.
