Pumpkins, Pumpkins, and MORE Pumpkins!

Last Monday, we started our pumpkin unit. After jotting down the week's "plans" on Sunday night, I woke up on Monday thinking that we'd just wing it throughout the next two weeks and not be so structured. The funny part is, Little Bear consistently says to me every morning after breakfast, "Mommy, what are we gonna do today?" And when there is any down time (ie. the time during the day when she USED TO take a nap) she says, "I want to do a activity." :) So I suppose she's going to keep me on my toes!

Here is what we've been up to:

Lacing Pumpkin
Little Bear LOVES to pretend sew, so I was really excited when I found this lacing pumpkin. She enjoyed threading the yarn through the pumpkin (even though I didn't have anything other than RED). This was a quick activity that she wants to do again and again! Sorry for the poor picture quality on this one!

Pumpkin Butter

Mmmmmmm, this recipe was so easy and yummy! Little Bear practically did it all by herself (of course with a little help measuring, etc.) We put it on warm toast for a snack :) The recipe made so much that we filled a few baby food jars and handed some out to the grandparents.

Fall Patterns
I found this pattern worksheet on the internet and it was a great way to introduce the skill of completing a pattern. This one was almost too easy for LB, so we moved right along to a harder set (see next pic).

Harvest Patterns
These patterns were a bit more difficult and didn't keep Little Bear's attention for very long. She was more interested in matching the cut pieces to the long pieces, which was still a good skill to be working on I suppose ;) We did have a pretty good discussion about what a cornucopia is though! (I'm sorry I can't find the link to these, I thought they came from www.filefolderfun.com, but I can't seem to locate them)

Pumpkin Carving
Little Bear had so much fun "helping" carve our pumpkin last year that we were really excited to get going on the carving this year. She decided on the Blues Clues template and she and Daddy got to work! We always enjoy when Daddy can participate in our learning! Little Bear helped scoop out the "goop" and separated the seeds for a later project ;)

It was a long process and they worked past bedtime, but Blue was totally worth the trouble! Thanks Daddy for doing a wonderful job!

Roasting Pumpkin Seeds
After cleaning and drying the seeds from our pumpkin, we decided to roast some for a snack. I found some great recipes here....we used the "Savory" one. Little Bear helped measure the ingredients and "painted" the seeds with the buttery mixture. They turned out pretty yummy, even Little Tiny tried one!

Pumpkin Puff Ball Sort
I found this adorable little pumpkin shaped ice cube tray at the dollar store a few weeks ago and just couldn't resist. Little Bear used a long handled spoon (also from the $ store) to scoop out the puff balls and place them in the slots. She sorted them by putting light green in one row and dark green in the other.

Harvest Mice Counting
These adorable little cards were so much fun! I am a member of a yahoo group for preschool teachers and/or homeschool moms and I got these from the leader's website. I'm not sure if they are free to everyone, but I'll put the link here for you to give it a try. This game is meant for kids to write the number of mice they count with a dry erase marker, but I made little number cards for LB to use for now.

After actually counting a few of the cards and doing this activity "the right way," she decided to use the cards to make letters instead. She made an "I," "H," and an "A." This little butterfly fairy princess is a lover of letters, that's for sure!

Pumpkin Color Matching
This cute little game also came from the Learning Treasures website (see above link). This one actually kept her attention a little longer because we played it several different ways. Sometimes we laid out the color words and she had to find the matching pumpkin and vice versa, but we also played it like a memory game and that was fun too!

Pumpkin Patch Counting Game
Alright, well I thought I'd get creative and make a game by cutting out leaves and putting numbers on them and using lots of little pumpkins (I printed from MS Word images) for Little Bear to count out on the leaves. I tried so hard to make this fun and even gave her a neat little "bucket" to carry the pumpkins in...and it backfired. She must have been full of energy this morning because all she did at first was run around and around all the leaves singing some made up song ;) I made a few attempts to get her to "play" by actually counting out the pumpkins and I gave up quickly. At least it turned out cute and the idea behind it was good :D We'll try again another day!

She added some colorful dice to the game and covered the pumpkins with them. We did do a lot of counting so I guess that was the whole point in the first place ;)

"P is for Pumpkin" Art Project
I saw this idea on the No Time for Flashcards blog and thought it was great! I traced 5 pumpkins using a cookie cutter onto a sheet of paper and let her paint them. After they were completely dry, I cut them out for her. She drew some vines on a lower case "P" and then used a glue stick to glue the pumpkins to the P to look like a pumpkin patch.

As she was gluing the pumpkins on, we talked about other words that begin with the letter P. My favorite one she mentioned was "pomegranate" because she really has only seen one at the grocery once, but when she's referring to her pinafore shirt I made her she calls it a pomegranate and we find it rather funny ;)
The finished product:

We're doing more this week (including some yummy baking too!) so look for another post next week! We have a birthday girl who will be turning 1 on Friday so I'm sure we'll be pretty busy this week and weekend :) I'm not sure what our deal is with having "Holiday babies"....maybe we'll break that spell one of these days! Enjoy the week everyone!