Toddlers Love Pumpkins!

There are so many fun things you can do with pumpkins! I think we probably could have (and maybe should have?) spent two weeks just playing around with pumpkins. (Be sure to check out our other fall themed activities!) Here are a few pumpkin activities we did:


 

Practical Life

Shopping 

Obviously the first thing you need to do if you're going to play with pumpkins is to buy some pumpkins. We had originally planned on going to a pumpkin farm to pick pumpkins, but it didn't happen. We went to a local garden store and let Madison choose a few pumpkins of different sizes. She wanted more pumpkins, so we talked about prices and how larger pumpkins are more expensive than smaller pumpkins, and how we had a limited pumpkin budget - haha. She also helped pick out some flowers to put in front of the house.

Cooking Skills 

Pumpkins are delicious and can be used for so many different things! We tried several different recipes, some of which were more successful than others. These Caramelized Pumpkin Seeds were pretty good, although M wouldn't go near them. I attempted this recipe for Apple Pumpkin Fruit Roll-ups, but I must have left them in the oven a little too long because the texture just wasn't right. Of course I had plans for a traditional pumpkin pie as well, but I opted for cookies instead and didn't want to have too many desserts around at the same time.

The Pumpkin Oatmeal Cookies turned out really well - yum! M loves to help bake, and is starting to help me find ingredients, count and measure ingredients, transfer ingredients into mixing bowls, and carefully turn the mixer on and off.

Safety, Concentration, Precision, Decorating

We got a Disney Pumpkin Carving kit that came free with one of our recent Disney Movie Club orders (shoot me an email if you want me to refer you to join!). M chose Donald and Mickey for the two big pumpkins. She didn't actually help to carve the pumpkins this year, but she sat and watched me do it, and we talked about how to be safe with the carving knife, how to pay close attention to details and concentrate, and how to arrange the pumpkins on the porch when we were finished.

Gardening

It's obviously not the right time of year to plant pumpkin seeds, but we put a few seeds in a cup of soil, watered them, and talked about what plants need to grow. We talked about some of the reasons that the pumpkin seeds wouldn't grow outside during this time of year. I put the seeds outside one sunny afternoon and accidentally left them outside that night, which probably didn't help their chances of germinating.... oops!

Sensorial

Painting Pumpkins

M had a lot of fun painting her pumpkin. She started coloring patches of different colors, then tried mixing some of the colors. We talked about how she could mix colors to make colors she didn't have (like purple). And of course, every pumpkin needs a little glitter!

Pumpkin Sensory Bag

I tried to convince M to stick her hand inside the pumpkins we were going to carve to help pull out the "guts," but she wanted nothing to do with it. She was interested in what was in there, but wanted a less messy option that wouldn't make her hands all slimy. I saw this Jack-o-Lantern Squish Bag on Fantastic Fun and Learning, and thought that would be the perfect solution! She loved it, and it allowed us to leave it out for a few days. She liked squishing it around, pushing the seeds around with her fingers, and seeing how the sunlight passed through the pumpkin but not the seeds. She also noticed that the seeds would drop down to the bottom of the bag on their own. We talked about gravity (that we had already discussed during our "space theme") and how it was pulling the seeds to the bottom of the bag.

(PS - M loved this Apple Pie Sensory Bin, which could very easily be converted into a Pumpkin Pie Sensory Bin. Maybe even try this pumpkin sensory dough!)

Language

Reading About Pumpkins

As usual, we got some books at the library. We got some general books about fall and seasons, books about gardens and how crops grow, and a couple of books specifically about pumpkins. Here are a few of the books we read:

Mathematics / Science

Pumpkin Seed Observations

Pumpkin seeds are so much fun to play with! I put out a variety of measuring tools for M to use to explore the seeds. She looked at them closely with her magnifying glass, picked them up with her tweezers, filled a measuring cup to see how many would fit, and put some seeds in a cup of water to see if they would sink or float. I had some wet, "slimy" seeds as well as some seeds that I washed and dried so she could compare the texture of the different seeds. I also had a ruler and scale available if she wanted to measure or weigh the seeds. This activity could easily be done with all kinds of natural or synthetic materials (or different types of materials to compare). As she gets a little older, I will get her a "scientific journal" so she can start sketching or making notes about her observations.

Pumpkin Observations

I had no intention of actually allowing pumpkins to rot on my front porch, but that's what happens when it's 80 degrees the week before Halloween. We slowly watched Mickey and Donald's faces distort as the pumpkins molded and caved in. M thought it was pretty cool to feel the mushy pumpkins, and to look at the mold on the inside. We compared how hard the non-carved pumpkins were compared to the carved ones, and talked about why that might have happened.

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How Does Your Garden Grow?

Fall is the time for colorful leaves, cooler afternoons, and pumpkin picking! I had originally planned to do some actually "farming" in the yard by building a raised bed where we could plant some pretend or real plants. My plans fell through and we did some different activities instead. Unfortunately, the two weeks we spent on fall- and farm-themed activities weren't all that well received. I'm going to share the activities anyway because I think there were some fun ideas that others might enjoy. :)

Practical Life

Cutting Play-doh

We love practicing to cut with play-doh. We have a pair of play-doh scissors (that came in this Animal Duffel Bag) and plastic knives, as well as a Play-Doh Fun Factory Press that makes all kinds of long shapes for M to cut up.

We also explored pumpkins (see this post), planted pumpkin seeds, threaded some pumpkin seeds onto a necklace, and baked pumpkin cranberry oatmeal muffins!

Sensorial

Farm Sensory Bin

I pulled together a quick sensory bin filled with coffee grounds, a popsicle stick "fence," beads and pom poms for seeds and crops, and some construction equipment as farm machinery. This was a big hit, especially with the boys who came over to play, but M enjoyed it a lot too and came back to it several times throughout the week.

M hasn't been interested in any transfer activities lately, but she spent a lot of time filling a small cup with coffee grounds to pour into the back of the dump truck. I guess she just needed a good reason to transfer...

Farm Play-doh

This activity was thrown together when M didn't seem interested in anything else. I gave her some homemade play-doh (recipe), colored play-doh to make vegetables, beads for "seeds" to plant on her farm, and some pet houses from her dollhouse.

She enjoyed planting her "crops" in rows and having the little bunny ("Peter Rabbit") run through the garden and make tracks in the dough.

Scented Play-doh

I really wanted to make some scented play-doh after I saw it on Learn Play Imagine. Despite the fact that I mixed a TON of each spice into the dough, most of them didn't exactly come out very strong. I created a matching activity so the kids could smell the spices and the play-doh and see if they could guess which ones matched, but the scents weren't really strong enough to make that possible. The play-doh was still a big hit, and the kids had a great time playing with it in the new Play Doh Barnyard Pals set I bought for our unit.

Pumpkin Prints

I got this great idea from Toddler Approved. I cut up some pieces of an old pool noodle so I had some round pieces for the pumpkin and some smaller pieces for the stems. I put out orange and brown paint, and gave M the option of painting the paint onto the noodle with her paintbrush, or dipping into the paint. She decided she preferred painting the surface of the pool noodle, and she also decided that she preferred to paint the stem onto her pumpkins with her paintbrush.

Sorting Animals

The idea for this "puzzle mix-up" game came about because I didn't have any farm animal figures. I wanted to do a sorting activity where M could sort a pile of animal figures into "farm animals" and "not farm animals," but I didn't have any farm animals! I remembered that we had a farm animal puzzle, and figured I might be able to make that work.

M hasn't shown a lot of interest in her puzzles lately, but she almost always plays with the puzzles that they leave out on the tables at the library. I thought that she might play with some of her own if I put them out where she could see them and made them look a little more interesting. I was right - she actually enjoyed this puzzle mix-up game that I created. It was so simple - I just took all of the pieces from two different puzzles - a farm puzzle and a jungle puzzle - and mixed them together in a container. She sorted out the pieces and decided if the animal belonged on the farm or not.

Language

Farm Word Crayon Rubbings

I have been seeing many bloggers doing crayon rubbings lately - especially leaves. We also played around with some texture plates that we used for crayon rubbings at the Children's Museum a few weeks ago. I decided to make our own crayon rubbing "plates" by using my hot glue gun to write some very basic words on index cards. I don't think anyone actually did this activity - M certainly wasn't interested - but I thought it was pretty cool...

F is for Farm

This was another activity that was not a hit. I created a farm scene with some stickers we had, as well as some mini popsicle sticks to make a little fence. I thought it would be fun for M to create her own farm scene, then put a title on top so she could remember that farm starts with the letter "f." I even brought out some glitter so she could trace the letter "f" in glue and add glitter to it. Nope... not a hit.

Mathematics

Farm Animal Counting

I found some farm animal stamps in our collection, and created some really basic number sheets for M to stamp onto.  She loved this when we did it with ocean creature stamps, but wasn't interested this time. She may have actually liked it better if I used larger numbers - she already has 0-5 pretty well mastered.

Counting and Comparing Quantities

We did a Counting Candy Corn activity at our friend's house (see the fall post), so I decided to take it one step further and add a sorting / comparing quantities element. I bought a pack of the candy corn variety pack (the kind with regular and chocolate candy corn as well as candy pumpkins). I gave each child a baggie with three pumpkins, six regular candy corn, and eight chocolate candy corn. After they sorted the different types of candy, they put the piles in order from least to most candy. M especially liked eating her candy when she was finished!

Cultural Studies / Science

Pioneer Day

A local farm was holding "Pioneer Day," during which they had old farm machinery and vehicles from the early 1900s on display. Most of the machinery was working and we were able to walk around and see demonstrations of old corn huskers, saws, hay balers, and tractors. They also had a corn grinder, and a huge tub of ground corn that M though was the biggest sensory bin she'd ever seen!

We watched a women in period costume spin cotton into yarn, compared different types of old tractors, and M got to sit in a car that was made about 100 years before she was born!

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