{Mommy School-Guest Post} All About Pumpkins!

Happy Monday Friends! Mommy School is back today. I’ve had good intentions of a series of posts over the past month for Mommy School. AG and I have done a lot of things while we were at my parents that I cannot wait to share with all of you. Unfortunately, my energy towards the end of my pregnancy was non existent. Chasing after AG all day, plus organizing a move and living with my parents was a lot to handle. By 8pm each night I could barely watch a TV show, let alone compose a blog post. So, eventually I’ll be sharing the fun things we were up to…eventually 😉

This past Wednesday, we welcomed our baby boy. While I’m getting used to life with two and our newest addition, I have a fabulous group of mamas that will be guest posting for the Mommy School series. The first mama is Colleen from Meet the Sullivans. I’ve followed her blog for years. She’s a mama who is always out and about doing fun things with her son, Owen. She makes delicious recipes and takes amazing pictures. On top of all that, she’s so incredibly sweet. Make sure to check out her blog and enjoy this fun and fabulous unit all about PUMPKINS!

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Hello, I’m Colleen! I’m the mommy behind Meet the Sullivans. I’m so excited to be here today to share a toddler-level unit on pumpkins for Leah’s Mommy School Series while she’s busy snuggling her new baby boy and transitioning into the roll of “mother of two”! Before having our sweet, curious and strong willed boy, Owen, I taught Kindergarten, and I have missed teaching so much, and this guest post has given me the excuse to put my teacher hat on again!

With Fall in full swing I thought pumpkins would be a fantastic theme to go with!

Exploring the great world of PUMPKINS! In this unit children will explore their shape, texture and taste, as well as why we include pumpkins in our homes and celebrations during this time of the year.

Five Little Pumpkins– A fun board book with bright & bold illustrations and the popular rhyme.

Apples and Pumpkins– A young girl spends a glorious fall day picking apples and searching for the perfect pumpkin in this refreshed classic with audio.

Pumpkin Patch– We don’t own this book, but I used to have it my classroom and we’ve read it at the library. Color photographs of pumpkins at all stages of growth, of farmers planting them, and of children enjoying them are the strength of this beautiful book. King’s sharp, well-framed and well-composed photos are sure to captivate pumpkin lovers of all ages.

These activities were O’s favorite part of the Pumpkin Unit! Please don’t feel over whelmed when looking at all of the activities. We did 2-3 activities a week over the course of two weeks. This gave me time to prep in between.

1. Pumpkin Guts Sensory Activity

PLAY – Cut the pumpkin open and let your child go to town playing with the pumpkin guts.
TALK – about how the guts smell, look and feel. Concentrate on words like slimy, sticky, smelly, stringy, smooth, bumpy, etc. as you talk about the inside and outside of the pumpkin.
COUNT – Pull out all the seeds and starting counting them together. We counted them in batches of about 15-25. I would just stop counting when O seemed to lose interest.

TASTE – Separate the seeds from the pulp, and then use your favorite Roasted Pumpkin Seeds recipe to try them together. I enlisted O’s help in the kitchen to wash, spread out to dry, season and mix the seeds. We only roasted half of our seeds and used the other half for the next activity.

2. Color Sorting with Pumpkin Seeds – Wash and fully dry your seeds. Separate them into four groups (or three, or five, however many colors you want to have) and put them in individual ziplock bags. Add a few drops of food coloring and shake to coat. Pour them out onto paper plates and let them dry overnight.

Once the seeds are dry you can mix them together in a plastic bowl so your little one can sort them. I used colored construction paper laid out on the floor and had O place the seeds on the paper. You could also use little cups or bowls.

3. Pumpkin Printing with Pool Noodle – We had lots of fun doing this art activity!

4. Pumpkin Spice Play Dough – Play dough is a great activity for increasing fine motor skills, as well as encouraging creativity — and I know I always have fun with it too! I shared this recipe for play dough last week on my blog. We are still having fun with it!

SNACK:

The day after we carved our pumpkin, and roasted the seeds, I made O a pumpkin themed snack before we got into sorting pumpkin seeds. In his snack there were (clockwise from top left: roasted pumpkins seeds, a clementine made to look like a jack-o-lantern, an Oatmeal Pumpkin Spice Cookie and cheddar cheese cut with cookie cutters to look like pumpkins.

Five Little Pumpkins

Five little pumpkins sitting on a gate.
The first one said, “oh my it’s getting late.”
The second one said, “there are witches in the air.”
The third one said, “but we don’t care!”
The fourth one said, “let’s run and run and run.”
The fifth one said, “I’m ready for some fun!”
OOOhh OOOhh went the wind
And out went the lights
And the five little pumpkins rolled out of sight.

We’ve been singing this song since we took the book out of our Fall /
Halloween decorations box in September. O loves the book and he loves
the song even more. He knows almost all the words now! The You Tube video below is pretty cute too, and it’s helpful if you don’t know the tune.

Thank you so much again to Leah for letting me share some of my ideas today on her blog! I hope this little break has made the transition easier, and I hope everyone here found some fun ways to teach their little ones a little more about pumpkins and fall!