Apple Picking Math Felt Board

We cannot wait to go apple picking in a few weeks and since the kids are becoming more and more interested in math activities, I decided to create a math felt board game inspired by apple picking!

To make this felt board, all you need is a sheet of brown felt and a sheet of green felt. The trees were already made, so I just had to add some greenery! I thought they looked cuter with the branches in the front. My kids also liked that they could "hang" the apples from the branches, so that was a bonus! We set up the trees on our light blue felt board and added some grass, two clouds and a sun.

I placed the felt board, two buckets (color coded with a piece of construction paper in the base), 20 apples (10 green and 10 red), and two D6 dice on a bamboo tray. We had D4's, D8's and D10's set aside, as well. I had extra apples, but I figured 10 of each was enough.

They would roll the dice (red die went with the red apples, green die went with the green apples) and read the number. Then they would either remove the apples from the trees and add them to the bucket, or they would take the apples from the bucket and place them on the tree. It was a great way to practice addition and subtraction!

We chose to subtract apples by removing them from the trees and adding them to the bucket.

Subtraction: 3 red, 6 green (in the bucket).

Subtraction: 4 red, 7 green (using a D8).

Subtraction: 9 red, 2 green (using D10 and D8).

And then we added apples to the tree to practice addition!

Addition: 3 red, 6 green.

We used green and red dice for this activity. Since we were only using 10 of each color, we only included up to D10's. We started at D6's and worked our way up to D10's! 

Munchkin really liked this felt board! He even brought over his cars to learn math. He lined them up and pretended that the cars where there to pick up apples. So cute! Perhaps this game will inspire a farmer's market pretend store!

Hands-on math activities are becoming daily favorites! It is very exciting! 

Bean also took a turn using this felt board math game. She told me we would need more apples, so they could both use it. I guess I'll have to see if I can find them again at Michael's craft store!

Bean was very particular about the apples growing off of the branches.

She ended up deciding that she liked placing the dice on the tree trunks.

Her method was to read the number on the die, then count out each apple and add it to the tree. She would then add up the red and green apples together. "The grand total is 8!"

And in case you don't own acrylic apples, you can always use pom poms! Or large red and green buttons! 

Follow Kristan's board Autumn Fun on Pinterest.