Pumpkins for October

 

Pumpkins, Pumpkins, Pumpkins

The month of October we will be talking about pumpkins and feelings.  We will start a new sign in method to have the children identify their name on a pumpkin and place it in the basket.  We have several fun books to read about pumpkins and feelings.  I will post pictures of the books weekly to the blog.  We will continue to work on our “stretches” before circle and being a “Listening Larry” at circle time along with the classroom routines.  We will also have a new greeting “Clap Tap Stomp” to use to greet our friends at circle time.  I will post the words to the blog so you can practice at home.  We will also watch different short video clips on you tube such as:  A Pumpkin Grows by Scholastic, Fill your Bucket by Learning Station, and more.  We will also have a new vocab word each week that will come from one of the books that we read – we will hear the word, the definition, repeat the word and try to use it in a sentence.

 

I have put some thought into our outside play time and have created different activities to bring out each day.  Such as cars, legos, animals, balls, pool noodles, fishing games, bowling game, musical instruments, and more!!!  The activities will be spread through out the week to give some variety for the children to play with and explore.

 

The first week we will focus on the life cycle of a pumpkin and all different types of feelings.  I have several books around these topics that we will read.  I have created a simple book – How is your Pumpkin Feeling and it has several different pumpkin faces for them to match happy, sad, mad, silly etc…  In our block area we will have pictures of the children in silly poses on toilet paper tubes to use along with the blocks.  For table work we will count pumpkins, pumpkin measuring cards, and sort different pumpkins (colors and sizes).  For art we will create the inside of a pumpkin, pint size pumpkin patch, and explore our pencil boxes with some free art.  Our sensory bins will have rice and sand and some fun pumpkin gems to find.  Our dress up area will stay a pancake shop.  They are really enjoying cooking and playing in this area.  Our science area will also stay as the “five senses” area using our sense of sight, touch, hearing and smelling.  NO TASTE!

 

Our second week we will read Spookley the Square Pumpkin, Pumpkin Jack and It’s Pumpkin Time.   In our block area we will have materials out to create pumpkin patches such as orange pom poms, green pipe cleaners, popsicle sticks, toilet paper tubes etc… Table work with a little teacher prep ahead of time the teacher will precut pumpkins, write each child’s name on them, and draw a line to show the children where to cut.  The children will work very hard to cut on the line, assemble to pieces in the correct order to spell their name and glue them on a piece of paper.  A ta-da the finished product should be their names on a pumpkin.   The rest of the table work will be counting pumpkins on ten frames, and rhyming.   During art the children will be creating their own pumpkin which could be any color or shape from our story Spookley the Square Pumpkin, as well as decorating something to hang from our tree branches in class.  We are hoping to model our water tables to use this week.  Our science experiment will be to try and grow a pumpkin inside a pumpkin.  It will be interesting to see how this will turn out. 

 

The third week we will read several books about feelings and create our own classroom books to keep in the book area to look at.  Table work will be creating the classroom books for Glad Monster, Sad Monster and I Like Myself.  We will also have a pumpkin investigation that we will do on a pumpkin in class.  I am looking for sunflowers to use in our science area to dissect and take apart the seeds which goes along with a book we will read Sunflower House. 

The last week we will wrap up our pumpkin theme.  We will also talk about being a bucket filler/bucket dipper.  Our table work will be math and writing journals, classifying cards, life cycle pumpkin sequence cards, and creating a bucket filler classroom book.  Art will be creating different pumpkins and doing free art.  Dramatic play will turn back into a kitchen.  If we have the time and pumpkins will do a pumpkin smashing activity – yes pumpkin smashing… the children will each take a turn with a rubber mallet to smash the pumpkin.  Then we will put the pumpkin outside of our classroom window to watch it all year and see what happens to it…like the book Pumpkin Jack.

 

After this month of pumpkins the children will be ready for our Artist Theme in November.