A is for Apple Tree!

I got the idea for this cute little activity from a site called "I can teach my child" and her "Family Handprint Apple Tree".  

I watch our friends' 3 kiddos two days a week, so I thought this would be a great craft project for one of those days. But, I needed to make a few modifications to have it suit our situation.  Any way you do this though, it's simple, cute, and requires few supplies:
Blue, Green, and Brown construction paper
Washable Red Paint
Scissors
Tape or Glue
A pencil, pen, or marker (for tracing & embellishing)

To start, trace each child's hands (using both hands with lower numbers of children makes your tree look fuller) onto green construction paper (very tricky to do with chubby 5-month old hands!), then cut them all out.  
For the big boys (both 3), I placed their cut out green handprints onto a plate and showed them how to dip one finger in the red paint and "make apples" on their handprints. For the most part, this worked fine--we just have high apple concentration in certain areas instead of well dispersed apples! :)
With the littler ones (17 month old twins and a 5 month old), I dipped & placed their fingers for them.

After washing up and while letting the apples dry, cut a tree trunk from the brown construction paper and attach it to the blue construction paper (leaving enough room at the top for the handprints leaves).

Then, once the fingerprints apples are dry, place them onto the tree trunk.  Add a few embellishments--children's names & ages, extra apples, a little saying, or anything else cute & apple related.  We're working on the alphabet with the big boys, so we went with "A is for Apple Tree".

Then, hang up your kids' adorable hands & fingerprints so everyone can enjoy their apple tree!