Pumpkins, Pumpkins, Pumpkins!

During the month of October, we do small unit on pumpkins that goes along with our theme of fall. We read many nonfiction books about the life cycle of pumpkins followed by sequencing activities, writing,    construction paper shape pumpkins and other projects. Below you will see some of the different activities we did during this unit!

To make our pumpkins, I covered one table with butcher paper and taped it down. This made my clean-up duty a lot easier! Then, I showed a group of students how to crumple up a piece of newspaper and stuff the brown paper bag. I helped the students tie their "stem" using a piece of green yarn. Finally, it was time for the fun! The students painted their pumpkin orange and could either use green or brown paint for their stem. They had so much fun and it was so easy!

A student in action!

Since the pumpkins were too tall to fit in my drying rack, I put extra butcher paper on the floor and laid out a picture of each child in my class. After the students were finished, they put their pumpkin next to their photo. I have never tried this before, but from now on, this is my go-to plan! This was so easy and I didn't have to worry about kiddos forgetting to write their name or painting over their name. I just checked before I took them off the paper when they were dry. 

After all of the pumpkins were dry, I used masking tape to tape the pumpkins above the students' lockers. It looked so cool as you walked down the hallway and really got us into the fall spirit!

After we graphed, we analyzed our graph by counting how many students preferred each carving and then added up all the numbers to make sure we had 19 votes!

After reading a book about Jack-O-Lanterns and learning the poem, Jack-O-Feelings, the students graphed their favorite Jack-O-Lantern on the Interactive Whiteboard (or magic board as we call it in my room!).

This was a fun craft that we did after a busy week. The students created their own "Candy Corn Friend"!

We decorated our door during free choice time! The sign on the door read "We're batty for learning!". We were in the middle of our nocturnal animal unit and it was almost Halloween! Talk about perfect planning! :)