Preschool Corner: Pumpkin Time!

I know ~ technically, the whole pumpkin theme is sooo last month, but it is still fall, so that's ok too! :) One of my favorite books about pumpkins is It's Pumpkin Time! by Zoe Hall. I've had this book on our shelf before I had kids of my own and LOVE it. While I was pulling together ideas, I remembered that Itty Bitty Bookworm had a unit on it {Bo, Year 1 ~ October}, so I pulled that out and filled in the rest of my plans using ideas from that unit.

And I know that I'm messing around with the alphabet, but I've gone in order for 3 years now...and I needed a little change!

Alphabet Book

We made our own little pumpkin patch by painting our fingers/knuckles with orange paint and then pressing it onto the paper. Zachary added some stems onto the pumpkins and then used some green ribbon to make a vine in his little patch.

Art

~ Paper Strip Pumpkins. Even our girls wanted to make some of these! They were so incredibly simple to make too! You can get the full direction here.

~ Paper Plate Pumpkins. We made small pumpkins by painting a small paper plate orange. We also used this activity as a lesson for mixing colors. Zachary used red and yellow paint to make the orange for the pumpkin.

Cooking

~ Pumpkin Spice Playdough ~ We cooked up a big batch of this yummy smelling playdough! The house smelled great after cooking it and the kids played with it for hours! You can find the recipe here. We have it stored in our refrigerator to use again too!

~ Pumpkin Seeds ~ I'm sure it's no big surprise to know that we made our own pumpkin seeds, is it? The kids were so excited to help out cleaning them and cooking them. Not so excited in eating them. {grins}

Language

~ What's Inside? This is an activity from Itty Bitty Bookworm where we made predictions about what we would find inside the pumpkin when we opened it up. It definitely wasn't what Zachary expected! Zachary also made a cute little pumpkin using yarn and pumpkin seeds when we were done.

~ Uppercase/lowercase Letter Sorting ~ Erica @ Confessions of a Homeschooler made some great printables for kids to sort uppercase and lowercase letter "P's".

Math

~ A Penny for Your Pumpkin ~ You'll have to ignore the lack of excitement that this picture shows, because REALLY Zachary had so much fun playing this little money game with me. In fact, we played it four times in a row and he still wants to do it!

I pulled out five mini-pumpkins and two big pumpkins and then gave Zachary a variety of coins: 2 pennies, 2 nickels, a dime and a quarter. We talked about the different coins and their names and then recited this little rhyme I found in my songs/rhymes box from years ago:

Five orange pumpkins in a pumpkin patch.
You know, the kind that are big and round and fat!
Along came Zachary with a {penny} to pay,
He bought a pumpkin and took it away!

Zachary got to choose the pumpkin he wanted to buy and had to hand me the correct coin that we named in the rhyme. Much fun!!

~ How Many Seeds? ~ We used this game from Itty Bitty Bookworm and put the correct number of seed and number cards together to make a little book together.

~ Seeds in the Pumpkin ~ I handed Zachary number cards and he put the correct number of seeds into each of the little pumpkins we have.

~ Pumpkin Patterns ~ We used the pattern cutouts from Itty Bitty Bookworm to make patterns {pumpkin, leaf, etc....}

~ Pumpkin Size Sorting ~ We had fun using this great printable from Erica @ Confessions of a Homeschooler.

Science

~ How a Pumpkin Grows ~ The book It's Pumpkin Time! is all about the life cycle of a pumpkin, so we talked a lot about how plants/pumpkins grow. I had some sequencing cards already on hand, but Itty Bitty Bookworm provides some in the curriculum unit also.

Songs and Rhymes

Five Little Pumpkins

Five little pumpkins sitting on a gate
The first one said, "Oh my! It's getting late!"
The second one said, "We don't care."
The third one said, "There are leaves in the air."
The fourth one said, "We're ready for some fun!"
The fifth one said, "Let's run and run!"

The whoosh went the wind and out went the light,
and the five little pumpkins rolled out of sight.

On Our Shelf



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