'Tis the season for all the pumpkin things! This year, I've gone a little crazy with the pumpkin decor and I'm not even mad about it. With how weird things are this year, I gave myself permission to go ALL out for the holidays to try and make them feel special. So, when I had an extra pumpkin laying around, I thought it would be fun to do a pumpkin themed study with the boys.
What I love about this theme, is you can really do whatever you want with it! We sorta made this whole month a pumpkin study, but I think the boys had the most fun with the pumpkin dissection!
Here's what we did!
Resources
- pumpkin study printables (this is one of our favorite shops for homeschool printables and these are on sale right now!)
- baking pumpkin (every local grocery store should have these right now!)
- paints
- paintbrushes
- butcher paper
- spoons (for scooping)
- sharp knife
- craft board (we like this one)
- nature anatomy (and other pumpkin books or literature)
- gathre mat (this is the one I have. I love to use ours for everything from highchair mess control to crafts and eating outside)
Pulling it All Together
Pick a nice spot, somewhere you don't mind making a mess. We like to take things outside for these kinds of projects, plus who doesn't love the fresh air?
Lay everything out and set up your crafts. When we take school outside, I like to have clipboards for the kids so they can draw or write on a study surface.
Cut your pumpkin in half, through the stem. This will give you two equal halves. It was perfect because each kiddo got to explore their own half. If you have more kiddos doing this, they can either share or you can get an extra pumpkin to give everyone their own.
Ask your kiddos to draw what they see. Talk about the anatomy of the pumpkin. Then, scoop out the seeds with the spoon. I made sure to talk about all parts. Make it a sensory experience. Get their hands slimy, have them smell the pumpkin, and get curious!
We saved the pumpkin seeds and roasted them after our dissection!
Once they were done playing with the pumpkin, we painted what we saw on the butcher paper and talked about the pumpkin life cycle.
We saved the two pumpkin halves, washed them, then roasted them to make our own pumpkin purée. With that purée, we made a yummy pumpkin pie!
Once we came inside we practiced tracing our letters and colored some more.
It was such a fun lesson! Stephanie provides SO many resources in her study printable, and there were tons of things we didn't even get to (but plan to before the seasons over).
Next on our list for this theme: felt pumpkins!
I'd love to see if y'all do this study too!
