Home School Themes: Pumpkin Week

October 1, 2020 /
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Pumpkin Week really started last week when we visited (“took a field trip to”) the fabulous Souza Family Farms to grab some pumpkins! The kids each picked out their own and we grabbed a few big ones to dissect.

We then spent the morning washing our pumpkins before opening them up and checking out what was inside. The kids separated the seeds from the “goop” in a few little bowls and we toasted some of the seeds in the oven for lunch!

With a quick google search for “pumpkin parts” I printed out a couple labeled pictures and while they ate we talked about all the different parts of the pumpkin as well as its life cycle (… you could always make your own if you wanted, but busy mom here).

We took a bunch of the seeds we didn’t toast and started seeing if we could sprout them in a wet paper towel. Those we could I had the kids plant in these little tiny seed pots so they could really watch the plants sprout and grow. If we are lucky maybe we’ll keep them alive long enough to get a vine!

One Science Lesson down! Phew!

The next morning we washed the pumpkins that the kids had chosen and spent most of the morning painting and decorating them to put on our front steps. We are a little early for Halloween, but being stuck in quarantine needed something fun to get us out of our rut!

With pumpkins going for less than a dollar we can always do this one again if we need to!

And hey, that takes care of arts & crafts for the day!

Next up we grabbed a bunch of books (curbside) from our library so we can read all about pumpkins as we continue to learn about them throughout the week.

“Watch It Grow Pumpkin” was a great in depth look at what we’d already seen in our chart as a pumpkin grows. Getting to see each step in lots more detail. “Pumpkin Jack” on the other end is a fun way to look at what will happen to our pumpkins as the seasons change and Halloween ends.

One of the other books “How Many Seeds in a Pumpkin?” is about counting seeds in a pumpkin so of course they all wanted to try that.

After guessing/making our hypothesis, once again we opened up and pulled all the seeds out. Then they got the hang of counting higher numbers with me giving them the tens (aka 30, 40, 50). We even practiced a little math with each kid counting out groups of seeds like they did in the book – although we adapted this part for their age and made it a little easier by just having each kid make one group (i.e. one set of five seeds or ten seeds) instead of grouping all the seeds we found.

Of course we threw some just for fun ones in there too! These sillier ones included Five Little Pumpkins, Duck and Goose Find a Pumpkin or It’s Pumpkin Day Mouse which were great for quick reading breaks while waiting for water to boil or our zoom music time to come on.

Science, Arts, Reading, & Math all conquered with our Pumpkin fun – and that doesn’t even include the “PE” of carrying pumpkins or the sensory experience of digging them out. All in all not a bad week of homeschooling!

Home School Halloween Sensory Play
Full Body Learning

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