🍎 Preschool Apple & Fall Science Activities Hands-On Learning for Ages 3-5

If your little one is anything like mine, fall is all about crunching leaves, picking apples, and asking a million “why” questions. That’s exactly why I put together this Preschool Apple & Fall Science Pack to make it super easy for us to turn all that natural curiosity into fun, hands-on learning.

Here’s a peek at what’s inside and how you can use it at home. I’ve even added little scripts you can say to your child and ideas to take each activity a step further.

Vocabulary & Tracing Sheets

First, I introduced some vocabulary with my kiddos. They will trace fall science words like seeds, stem, and core, while learning what each word means. It's fun to challenge them to use the words throughout the week or month. My daughter loves pointing out the seed in her fruit and the stems on flowers now!

Parts of an Apple

Next, we cut open an apple and observed what we saw! With a labeled diagram to follow up, we learned the apple’s anatomy: stem, skin, flesh, core, seeds.

🗨️ What you can say:

“Let’s cut open this apple and see if we can find all the parts! Where’s the skin? Can you spot the seeds? Let’s match them to the picture.”

✨ Extension idea:
Dry the seeds and plant them in a cup to start a little apple sprout experiment.

Apple Senses Test

This was so fun! We talked about our senses-(learn how to teach these to your kiddos from my "All About Me Unit Here") and used the chart to record how apples look, smell, and taste.

🗨️ What you can say:
“Hmm, this apple smells sweet! Let’s take a bite—does it taste crunchy or soft? Let’s write down what we discovered.”

✨ Extension idea:
Try a taste test with different apple varieties and create a “family favorite” chart.

Sink or Float Experiment

We love any opportunity to play sink or float! This was a fun prediction game and the kiddos had a blast. Try the ones we did or do your own variety.

🗨️ What you can say:
“What do you think will happen if we drop this apple in water—will it sink like a rock or float like a boat? Let’s test it!”

✨ Extension idea:
Add other fruits or objects and make a “sink or float” chart.

Apple Color Sorting

We had so much fun with this and I even had my 3 year old practice cutting the apples out! It's a great activity to reinforce colors while sorting into red, yellow, and green categories.

🗨️ What you can say:

“Look at all these apples! Let’s put the red ones in this basket, the green ones here… How many yellow apples can we find?”

✨ Extension idea:
Bring real apples home from the store and graph how many of each color you bought.

Big & Small Sorting

We sorted the cards into big and small! I hid the cards all around the living room and my daughter had to find them and bring them to the chart. It got her up and moving while learning, win-win!

🗨️ What you can say:
“This apple is HUGE compared to this tiny one. Can you help me sort the big apples and the small apples?”

✨ Extension idea:
Line up the apples from smallest to biggest and practice using size words (tiny, medium, jumbo).

Leaf Color Hunt

Using the color charts, we had fun hunting down leaves to sort by color. If you don't have enough leaves you can use the picture cards included in my packet!

🗨️ What you can say:
“Let’s see if we can find a purple leaf! Do you think they’re harder to find than yellow ones?”

✨ Extension idea:
Press the leaves you collect and make a fall color collage.

Fall Nature Hunt

We had an adventure on our scavenger hunt to find acorns, pinecones, apples, and more.

🗨️ What you can say:
“I spy something small and brown that squirrels love… can you guess what it is? Yes, an acorn!”

✨ Extension idea:
Create a little “nature table” at home where your child can display what they found.

Fall Graphing

Kids count and color dots on a graph to show what they collected.

🗨️ What you can say:
“Wow, we found 3 pinecones and 5 leaves. Let’s color our graph to see which we found the most of.”

✨ Extension idea:
Introduce early math by asking, “Which is more? Which is less?” and comparing categories.

👉You don’t need to plan, prep, or buy fancy materials.

👉Just print, grab some apples and leaves, and you’re ready to teach science through play.

👉 Make this season full of curiosity, laughter, and hands-on learning.

Get the Apples & Leaves Unit Here