Activities and Crafts for Johnny Appleseed Day

August 10, 2026 by Sarah White Leave a Comment

Johnny Appleseed Day is sometimes celebrated on Sept. 26 because that is John Chapman’s birthday, but even if you’re just doing an apple unit study for fall it’s a great time to talk about Johnny Appleseed.

And that’s the place to start, that Johnny Appleseed was a real person named John Chapman who was born in 1774 in what was then the province of Massachusetts Bay. He traveled west when he turned 18 and despite the image of him randomly tossing apple seeds everywhere, he was really a deliberate planter of apple tree nurseries, which he left in the care of others and checked on every year or two.

Learn a little more of his story with these cute coloring pages (though not entirely historically accurate, they’re still cute) from Homeschool of 1. They also have a Johnny Appleseed themed word search printable.

This pin of a Scholastic News page doesn’t link to a website, but it gives you some basic information and a true and false quiz you can use with kids.

Crystal & Co. has a cute apple themed counting mini book you can print and use with your Johnny Appleseed unit. They also have some coloring pages with a bit of handwriting practice. Or practice cutting with the Johnny Appleseed themed worksheets from 3 Boys and a Dog.

Make a Johnny Appleseed puppet to help tell the story with this craft with a free printable template from Simple Everyday Mom. You’ll also find some cute printable worksheets there to learn his story and put it in the correct order.

Color, cut out and assemble this Johnny Appleseed drawing from Homeschool Preschool. They also have an apple seed counting activity you can use for practicing one to one correspondence.

Tiaras and Tantrums has a free printable apple unit that includes Johnny Appleseed facts and coloring pages, as well as how to say apple in different languages, tracing apple vocabulary, art project ideas, science experiments and more.

And if you need more apple themed activities to go with your Johnny Appleseed celebrations, check out my posts on apple crafts and apple learning activities.

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Fine Motor Task Cards for Kids

I don’t know why Pinterest just suddenly decided I needed to see all the content about task cards and task boxes for kids, but these ideas are great for the classroom to keep in centers or have on hand for early finishers. You can also use them at home as quiet bags or boxes for kids to use when younger siblings might be sleeping, or in the car for a non-screen activity.

Let’s take a look at some fine motor skill task cards and how you can use them to teach kids skills while they play.

Pre-K Pages has a nice set of playdough task cards you can use in boxes or bags with a little tray (or they can just work on the table if they are sitting at a table). Working with clay or play dough is a great fine motor skill exercise, or you can add these to your playdough center if you have one to give them a little bit of direction while they work.

Teaching Mama has a bunch of great ideas for fine motor task boxes, from practicing working a glue bottle to threading beads, using clothespins or scissors, dropping water, finger painting and more. There’s a free printable that shows all the task options she talks through in the post if you want to make your own little boxes, or just keep these ideas on hand when you’re ready to add some fine motor fun to your days.

One of the ideas she mentions in that post is working with a hole punch, and Early Learning Ideas has a whole bunch (the urge to write “hole bunch” is strong) of ideas for printables that help kids practice hole punching, whether it’s a strip with circles on it for them to punch or pictures that include circles for punching, these ideas make it a little more fun to practice this important skill.

My Happy Place Teaching has a whole post about using fine motor task boxes in kindergarten, and her paid resource includes more than 100 task ideas with printables. But if you don’t need 100 boxes you can still get some good ideas from this post about different tasks to include and why and when you can use them. She also mentions using them in the morning while you’re busy with kids coming in at different times, which is a great idea.

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