The Seasons of Kim and Luke's Apple Trees

We have been learning about the four season and have especially enjoyed the book The Season of Arnold's Apple Tree. When I saw this "season booklet" in an old Mailbox magazine, I knew it was something perfectly in line with our new favorite book. (This is a wonderful resource for early education activities if you have never checked it out before.) We made a personalized "Season of an apple tree book" for both Kim and Luke.
I started this project off by taking regular printer paper and folding 3 sheets in have for each booklet. I glued them together to form a four page accordian style booklet. (I just kept experimenting until I got the booklet fold I wanted)

Using brown tempra paint, I painted each child's hand and a little bit of their wrists. These will be our trees.

With my "helper" Laura, we made a "tree" print on each of the four sections of our books.

While these trees dried, I got the embellishments ready.

This is not in order, but I couldn't resist!! The look on Luke's face is why I bother with such messy activities.

The cover of Kimmy's book.

From left to right, I labeled each tree winter, spring, summer and fall. We left the winter tree bare. For the spring tree, we crumpled up light green and white tissue paper. We then glued these onto the springtime tree for new leaves and blossoms.

On the summer tree we used a sponge to dab dark green paint to make summer leaves. When the green paint dries, use red paint and make apples by making red fingerprints onto the tree.

Kimmy working hard on her "summer" tree.

summertime

The fall tree is made by gluing red, orange, and yellow construction paper onto our handprint tree. We also added a little pile of leaves at the base of the tree.

Red fingerprint apples

The finished booklet. It folds up nicely, making it perfect to share with friends who will enjoy being "read" too.

winter and spring

summer and fall