Fall activities : Play with apple dough made with real apples

Fall may not be here, but September is. I can’t wait to create all the fun fall activities for the kids, do cute fall crafts and ooh fall sensory bins. Don’t you just love autumn? My preschooler has already fallen in love with the apple pie scent and the other day wanted me to add the apple scent to her mango shake! Talk about quirky!

To up the upcoming season’s excitement we have joined hands with 3 other awesome blogs out there to bring you 5 days of amazing fall activities.

This fall activities series will run on Learn Play Imagine, Fun At Home With Kids,  and Housing a Forest.

Here are our themes for the series:

Monday : Fall themed dough

Tuesday : Fall themed paints

Wednesday: Fall themed glowing play ideas

Thursday : Scents of Fall

Friday: Fall themed nature play ideas..

On to today’s post – Apple dough with real apples! The fragrance was astonishing!

We gathered our supplies to make our apple dough. The kids made this one for the large part and needed help during the last stages of kneading.

We used our favorite play dough recipe to make these. The kids added the flour, salt, oil and the cream of tartar to a large bowl

Then they spooned in the apple pie filling which was ground to a fine puree. I’d assume you can also use apple sauce to make this very fragrant recipe. After adding the apple, they added more apple pie spice for extra fragrance.

Finally we added boiling water and kneaded the dough into big balls of apples. We made three colors – red, green and yellow.The kids grabbed a few leaves from our orange tree to add to our apples and my 4 year old couldn’t stop giggling about that. { simple things}

I set out a few simple supplies for them for pretend play. A few silicone cupcakes liners, sprinkles, pom poms and plastic knives and spoons.

Cutting that large apple dough was the most fun for my preschooler. Unknowingly she was developing her fine motor skills -all through play.

{The kids and I love themed activities. Engaging in fall activities is giving the kids a sense of time and a better understanding of seasons. I loved it when she said ” so we are doing fall stuff, does it mean it is going to be Halloween soon?” I loved that question and it makes all our themed/seasonal activities worth it!}

They had a lot of fun pretending to make cupcakes with the apples. Kneading the dough, pinching the dough, rolling the dough and squishing up the dough. All while taking big whiffs of the yummy apple scent.

They “poured” the sprinkles and stuck pom poms to decorate their cakes.

The kids lined up their newly created apple cupcakes for mommy. It seemed I HAD to choose my favorite. No way I’m falling into that trap! That beautiful smile would have turned upside down.

The recipe

1 cup flour

1/4 cup salt

2 tbsp oil

1 tbsp of cream of tar tar

2 tbsp of apple pie filling

a good sprinkle of apple spice.

3/4 cup of boiling water.

If you need a stronger scent, add more pie filling and a bit more flour. Pie filling really makes it smell delicious.

Thanks for reading

Affiliate links to the products and similar products used

To see what the other blogs did for our fall themed dough day visit the following links

Pumpkin Spice Marshmallow Dough from Housing A Forest

Fall Play Dough from Learn Play Imagine

Pumpkin Spice Ornaments from Fun At Home With Kids

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Check out our resourceful e-book filled with many preschool play ideas.

We have also collaborated on another e-book with simple and practical baby play ideas.