K4 Learning at Home: Pumpkin Week!

We started off this week learning about Christopher Columbus (see that post here) and being that Christopher Columbus brought back the first pumpkin to Europe we spent the rest of the week talking about... you guessed right, pumpkins!

contains affiliate links 
Language Arts:

• Copywork from "Draw Write Now vol. 2"
• Sight Word Pumpkin SMASH-- big hit!  Need. More. Shaving. Cream.
• Made real and non-sense words using the letters from the word "pumpkin."  T came up with:

pun  up  in  kim  kin  kip  mup kum nim (then he was "done!")

 This idea and several others came from Teaching Heart's Pumpkin Unit.

• Completed Pumpkin Seed Sight Word worksheet and a Color By Word worksheet
• Had fun reciting "Jack O Happy" poem; afterwards T was doing something and called it, "Jack O Awesome." : )

Math:

• Pumpkin Patch Place Value

• Pumpkin Patch Graphing found in 1+1+1=1 Pumpkin Preschool Pack.  T loved seeing which pumpkin would win; although he did 'rig' the race a bit!  After the race, we practiced Ordinal Numbers that we had learned when rowing, The Glorious Flight.
• Shake and Add Pumpkin Patch:

I put numbers 0-5 in the bottom of an egg carton and placed two orange buttons inside.  T had to shake the egg carton and add the numbers the buttons landed on. 

• Pumpkin Roll n Stamp (idea found here): I wrote several addition facts up to 6 and also wrote tally marks which T had been learning in his Math U See curriculum.

• Counted pumpkin seeds into groups of 10 and used them to find the area; measured the circumference with yarn (this and other ideas at Hubbard's Cupboard)

Art:

• Painted a sock pumpkin:

Wanna know what to do with a sock that is missing its other half?  Turn it into a pumpkin!  I used one of T's socks (and I am sure I'll find the other one after this project!) and stuffed it with a couple of plastic grocery bags.  Then I had him paint it orange and the 'stem' brown.  I tied it together with a chenille rod and T used his paint dobbers to make the face. 

• Chalked Pumpkins-- so fun!
• Cut and Paste Pumpkin activity
• Pumpkin Face Paper Craft
• Bleeding Marker Pumpkin drawing-- drew and colored pumpkin then sprayed our paper with water.
• Tried Pumpkin Tissue Paper Painting, but our tissue paper didn't bleed.... so it turned out to be tissue paper mosaic!



Chalk Pumpkins



Tissue Paper Mosaic



Bleeding Marker Pumpkins



Pumpkin Face Paper Craft.  Aren't they the most interesting pumpkins ever?!

Science:

• Lifecycle of a Pumpkin
• Observed and explored our pumpkin with our 5 senses; T filled in the blanks:

"My pumpkin looks great;

My pumpkin feels cold;

 My pumpkin smells... it doesn't have a smell;

 My pumpkin sounds not good;

 and My pumpkin tastes yummy.

• Pumpkin Observation sheet
• Learned pumpkins are a fruit!

And just for fun, T completed a pumpkin maze and we played a game called 'Roll A Pumpkin'.  I also have a matching game TBP (to-be-printed) and just haven't yet.... Anyways, we had a lot of fun!  There are just SO many great pumpkin go-alongs that we may have to revisit pumpkins at Thanksgiving : )

I'd love for you to follow along so you never miss out on one of our fun activities we share at School Time Snippets!