pumpkins | COUNTRY FUN

November 18, 2011
by countryfun
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SPLAT! Smashed, Slimy, Smithereens

We had a really fun lesson on the life cycle of plants and what they need to grow using Too Many Pumpkins by Linda White. This is also a great book for working on predictions, cause and effect.

To make our Splat!. I took put dribbles of orange paint and a little glitter on white construction paper and had the children fold and press. They opened, checked on what had happened and then folded in another direction. Had so much fun with the refolding I had to stop before the paper fell apart. They got some really great SPLAT!

This photo album generated with Smilebox

October 25, 2011
by countryfun
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Halloween Week 2

We started off this last week before Halloween with some pumpkin lacing, working on the concept of “next” hole as we went around the circle shape. Once laced we used torn paper to make our pumpkin “orange”. I was hoping the children could tear up their own paper, but it proved a real struggle for most of them. To finish they glued on pre-cut facial parts. (To support your child’s skills let them rip up or tear junk mail, newspaper, or odd packing paper to start to get a tearing motion and not a grab and pull motion. We will be tearing up paper here as part of my recycling, so it will be fun and helpful while we work on this skill.)

This morning we also had activity centers where we used our tongs and Halloween pompoms or beaded Halloween pipe cleaners for witches’ and wizards’ wands.

October 20, 2011
by countryfun
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The Little Old Lady Who Was Not Afraid of Anything

We’ve ended up having a lot of fun with the books we’ve read this week. The finger play for Five Little Pumpkins – just love that Whoooooosh! and clap for ‘out go the lights’. “Drat” was a favorite refrain with Big Pumpkin. The best was of course “BOO! BOO!” from The Little Old Lady Who Was Not Afraid of Anything. Would you be afraid of this?

The last two books were both Halloween books that had a problem to solve and it took working together to solve it. It wasn’t about the biggest, or strongest. It was about having an idea that involved everyone working together. This can be such a hard lesson to get across to children. In reading these books and discussing them every day this week the lesson is being absorbed. I am really finding a benefit in developing a deeper understanding of the books we read following our 3 A Day version of the 5 A Day reading program. 3 books is definitely the right number for the age and attention point of the children in my group.

Our book expansion project was to build a scarecrow using the parts the little old lady meets in the woods while walking home.

We started with some cutting on the line practice -

Then more glue stick work (we’re getting there). Last was to retell the story and glue down the pre-cut item in the color they chose.

As each piece was added the children glued their scarecrow part where they wanted.

Think we ended up with some really incredible scarecrows. When I hung them up rather than going to the cubbies, there was a little anxiety that I was keeping them and they could not take home. I reassured them that they were going home, but I wanted to enjoy them until then.

That was ok.

Lesson details at Preschool Lessons.

(PS-The children keep repeating the actions of the scarecrow parts while playing the rest of the morning, so I wrote up, copied off and attached to each picture.)

September 20, 2011
by countryfun
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Pumpkins Day 3

We started our morning off reading Pumpkin, Pumpkin by Jeanne Titherington. I also had sequencing cards all run off and laminated to use as we read the story. I cannot find the original black/white source for these cards. When I do I will edit for the link.

Then it was into the kitchen. We learned about nutmeg today. Observed it in whole form and tried various ways to break it up to use in our recipe. Knife didn’t work. Scraping with a spoon didn’t work. Smashed with a hammer, which worked fine for the smell, but the pieces were too big to use. I got out my grater, which was explored. Decided the smallest holes would make the smallest spice, so I grated a whole nutmeg and sure enough we got our powdered spice.

Oh She Glows had a simple pumpkin butter recipe that I adapted (used apple cider and no spices or sugar) to have with our pumpkin donuts recipe from bunsinmyoven. Since we used canned organic pumpkin that already had spices in it we adjusted the recipe a little. We just needed to figure out how to get it out of the can. Shaking? No. Hammer? No way! Take off the top – yes, but with what? (silence) Manual can opener. Easy to see how gears work. We only added a strong 1/4 tsp cinnamon and 1/8 tsp fresh nutmeg. We also cooked our donuts with a mini donut sheet, not machine. Sampled one hot from the oven ~ should make a good snack.

Our song for today is based on “Ten Little Indians” ~

One little, two little, three little pumpkins.

Four little, five little, six little pumpkins.

Seven little, eight little, nine little pumpkins.

Ten little pumpkin in the patch.

Ten little, nine little, eight little pumpkins.

Seven little, six little, five little pumpkins.

Four little, three little, two little pumpkins.

One little pumpkin in the patch.

Inspiration for today”s craft project was from Kaboosse. I have made many stuffed bag pumpkins before, but I’m adapting the tendril and leaves idea this year. Drying tonight, so will finish tomorrow.

September 15, 2011
by countryfun
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Pumpkins – Day 2

Today was all about circles with some work on colors and our first look at patterns.

The day started with an art project where the children traced around their circle tray. Mixed red and yellow paint together to get a pumpkin orange. Stamped orange circles inside their traced circle. Added a green stem and a handprint leaf. Lots of excited “I did it!”, giggles and “Can I put it in my cubby?”

For stories we reread Mouse Count, The Shape of Things and Picking Apples & Pumpkins. We used our Mouse Count game during the story again today. These guys like being snakes

I brought out my bags of foam shapes to do some playing with and started working on the idea of patterns with I and J. D and H had fun just playing around with the shapes. I and J worked really hard and did a great job.

The last part of our morning was spent making a circle lunch – grapes, kiwi and homemade thin crust pepperoni pizza. We found out there are a lot of circles in our pizza: the tomatoes for the sauce, the pan the sauce cooked in, the ball of dough, the dough spread out, the ladle for the sauce, the cheese, the pepperoni, the pizza cutter and the plates.

Lesson details found at Preschool Lessons.

October 29, 2010
by countryfun
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Pumpkin Cookies & Leaf House… just part of a great Fall day

You have to love a day like we had yesterday. It was sunny, blue sky, the leaves were still falling, and by the afternoon it was close to 70 degrees warm. It was a day to play outdoors among the leaves, but only after we got snack made from some of the end of the season harvest in the garden.

The pumpkins didn’t grow as well as usually this year, but the 3 pie pumpkins have been put to good use. They have been seeded, baked and pureed. We used some of the puree today to make a few snacks up – pumpkin cookies and pumpkin cranberry corn bread. The corn bread is waiting for taste testing next week, but the cookies passed and the recipe is below.

Free recipe card design personalized with Smilebox

The girls spent the afternoon playing in their leaf house. They asked for the rakes and went to town raking clear rooms and piling leaves for walls. It’s wonderful to watch this type of play for it reminds me of not just my children’s youth, but also my own. Leaves, rakes and kids just means fun.

October 22, 2010
by countryfun
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Catching Up

Although I try to post on each of our activities as they happen, I just have not been able to find my way to the computer to post regularly this week, so today’s post is to catch up on everything.

Last week’s preschool activities were about F and E and our last project was a collage done in the style of Eric Carle with textured papers we had made previously. . One of my school aged children decided to also make one.

This week I introduced the letter “H”. I may not go all out decorating the space for Halloween, but I enjoy doing activities around this holiday. Our first project was to make a stuffed jack-o-lantern. This is always a fun activity with lots of learning taking place (fine motor skills, color recognition, body awareness..)

He wanted a scary, mad face, with a nose, eyes and ears just like his. I cut the shapes as I was directed and he glued. Think we got the scary, mad just right.

We spent time practicing all our old and then our new letter on our white boards. Making these dry erase boards has turned out to be one of the best things about the new space. They are used each day in so many ways.

Last night I was going through materials on hand and old ideas for another Halloween project to finish off this week. Found a few, but nothing was really calling to me. Then early this morning while catching up on my Reader (all the blogs I follow) I saw the cutest mummy idea. It was one of the Crafty Crow post ideas and was from Then She Made…. which was a new blog to me. Off I went to check it out. It was as simple as it looked and would work just great with the skills and interest of my preschooler. Think this mummy should look right at home with that scary jack-o-lantern.

If you want more detailed information on these projects, preschool lessons, and books we’re reading please go to the appropriate Country Fun Expanded blogs found in the sidebar.