Pumpkins - Day 3

Phonics/Writing

Preparation:

 

Materials

Paper with "Pumpkin," "stem," Leaf" printed  on it
Lined paper for writing
Teaching:

1.  Sound out each word with child and write, sound by sound on the writing paper, using best handwriting (I'll be posting video of how to teach handwriting this wek on youtube under the preschoolmommy, I'll add links later)

Reading

Preparation:

Create a book (see how to make a book from one piece of paper on my youtube video How to Make Mini Books)

Materials:

Book
Crayons

Teaching:

1. Read each page with your child, have them illustrate the text on the page.

Math

Preparation:

Seeds from Day 1 pumpkin, washed, and dry
Spinner with numbers 1-4 (I took apart a spinner from a board game, cut a circle from a piece of paper, divided it into fourths and wrote numbers on it.  I taped it to the table so the paper didn't slide around.)

Materials

Seeds
Spinner

Teaching:

To Play:

1. Child spins spinner and takes that number of seeds.
2. You spin spinner and take that number of seeds.
3. Take turns spinning.  When a person has a group of five seeds, they put them in a pile and lay them aside.
4. We played until one of us made it to ten piles (my son won!). You can play until all seeds are gone, or five piles.  You can change the numbers on your spinner and make piles of 3, or 4. 

To watch us play and get a better idea of how the game works watch my youtube video, Pumpkin Seed Game.

(Sorry about the youtube links but my videos have been  having a hard time uploading to this site)

Book of the Day:  The Pumpkin Patch by Elizabeth King

1. Read the book to your child, talking about what you are learning as you read.

Science

Preparation:

Get out a recipe that uses pumpkin (or use my recipe for "allergy free cupcakes" - my son has allergies to wheat, egg, milk, peanut, tree nut, sesame, soy, fish, and shellfish)
Prepare ingredients

Materials

Recipe and ingredients
My recipe is:
Allergy Free Pumpkin Cupcakes
1 cup Sugar
1/2 cup Vegetable Oil
2 TBSP Coconut Oil
1/2 tsp Vanilla
1 cup Pumpkin
3 tsp Egg Replacer mixed with 4 TBSP Water (we use EnerG Egg Replacer)
1 cup Oat Flour (you can look for gluten free oat flour or Bob's Red Mill GLuten Free flour or Garbanzo Fava Bean flour)
1 1/2 tsp Xanthan Gum
1 1/1 tsp Baking Powder
1 tsp Baking Soda
pinch Salt

1 tsp Cinnamon

1/2 tsp Nutmeg

1/4 tsp Cloves

1.  Combine sugar and oils.  Blend in pumpkin, vanilla and egg replacer.  Set aside.

2.  Sift together flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and spices.

3.  Pour dry ingredients into pumpkin mixture and blend.

Pour into muffin tin lined with cupcake liners and bake at 350 approximately 30 minutes, or until fork inserted in center comes clean ("Comes clean" with allergy free may mean you may have a small amount of fully cooked cupcake that sticks to your fork. Just make sure no glossy, uncooked batter is on your fork).

Teaching:

1.    Cook with your child.  You measure, they pour.  Let them stir. Count out what you are measuring.

2.  We made allergy free frosting and added some sprinkles, too.

 Art

Preparation
Materials

Orange ball from yesterday's art lesson
Black paint
Brown paint
Paintbrush
Empty toilet paper roll
Masking Tape or glue

Teaching:

1. Take a piece of masking tape and tape the toilet paper roll to the top of your papier mache ball.
2. Have child paint a jack-o-lantern face on pumpkin with black paint.
3. Have child paint stem brown.

Ta da!  A 3-dimensional art project perfect for decorating with =)

Pumpkins - Day 2

Phonics/Writing

Preparation:

Using letters from a Scrabble game, write the words "pumpkin," "stem," and "orange" on a piece of paper.  Trace around the letters.  Then write the words "pumpkin," "stem," and "orange" in the boxes.  I added lines next to the words for writing practice.

Materials

Paper

Scrabble letters

Pencil

Teaching:

Letter Learner (Learning letters and letter sounds):

1.       Every preschool session play one of the letter learning games from this site. 
2.       As child places letters on the paper sound out the phoneme (sound) of that letter. 

 Emergent Reader (Knows letters and letter sounds):

1.       Have child find and sound out each letter as they place it on the paper.

2.       Have child guess word, and if they are unable to figure out word, sound it out together slowly until they can figure out what the word says.

The child's paper should look like this:

3. Have the child, using correct penmanship, write the words.

Reading

Preparation:

Make a poster with poem “Pumpkin”

"Pumpkin, Pumpkin,

Round and fat

Turn into a jack-o-lantern

Just like that.

Boo!

Materials:

Poem

Orange crayon

Yellow crayon

Teaching:

Letter Learner:

1.        Read the poem together 2-3 times.  At the end of the poem make your best "jack-o-lantern face."

2.       Have your child find and color all the ‘P’s” orange.

3.       Say the word pumpkin together.  Listen to the two /p/ sounds.

4.       Read it through again.  Point to each word as you say it.

5.       Help child point to words with you. (This helps them recognize sounds and words).

Emergent Reader:

1.       Read poem together 2-3 times.

2.       Have child color the word “pumpkin” orange. 

3.        Have child point to and say any other words they know.  They can color those words, too.

5.       Say poem again pointing to words. 

6.       Hand child a pointer (wand, pen or pencil with a star attached to it, etc.) and as you say the poem together they point to each word as they say it.  (This is important in helping them connect written word with what they are saying).

Math

Preparation:

Seeds from Yesterday's pumpkin, washed, and dry

Materials

Seeds

Teaching:

1.        Count the pumpkin seeds together. Make piles of ten seeds as you count.  When child gets tired of counting, stop.  Don't torture them with continuing to count after they've lost interest.  Be positive and say, "Wow! We counted 46 seeds!  That's a lot of counting, and there are still more! There are a lot of seeds in pumpkins!"

Book of the Day:  Pumpkins by Gail Gibbons

1. Read the book to your child, talking about what you are learning as you read.

Science

Preparation:

Buy a pumpkin, and several other fruits

Materials

Fruits

Teaching:

1.    Have your child compare and contrast the pumpkin to the other fruits.  Talk about size, shape, color, texture, etc.

Art

Preparation

Cut orange construction paper into 2 inch strips
Blow up a balloon into a small ball, tie off.
Mix together on medium size plate approximately 1/4 cup glue and 1/4 cup water (just eyeball it, you don't need to be exact.)

Materials

paper
balloon
glue mixture

yarn

Teaching:

1.        Have your child dip the strips of paper into the glue/water mixture.  We put several strips in the mixture and let them soak until thoroughly wet. 
2.  Apply the strips, one at a time, to the balloon, layering pieces over one another. Like this:

3.  When the balloon is covered with the paper, tie a piece of yarn to the top, take the balloon outside, tie it so the balloon is hanging and let dry overnight.  You may want to put something under the balloon because it can drip. If you want to dry the pumpkin on your counter overnight realize it may flatten a little.

Pumpkins - Day 1

Phonics/Writing

Preparation:

Write the word pumpkin on a piece of paper, then cut into individual letters.

Materials

“Pumpkin” letters

Teaching:

Letter Learner (Learning letters and letter sounds):

1.       Sound out each letter.

2.       Have child hand you each letter as you sound it out (/p/ sound – they give you letter ‘p.’) Create word pumpkin with letters.

3.       Blend sounds together slowly to make word pumpkin; draw each sound out. Have child try to guess word.  If they can’t, you need to blend sounds closer and closer together until they guess word (this is a phonics skill that they will learn in time).

Emergent Reader (Knows letters and letter sounds):

1.       Tell child that there is a secret word that these letters spell. They will be forming little words and finally they will make the secret word.

2.       Say, “Using these letters, make the word ‘pin.’” If needed, slowly sound out the word as they search for the letters and put them together to form word “pin.”

3.       Say, “Change one letter to make the word “pip.”

4.       Change a letter to make the word “kip.”

5.       Say, “Change a letter to make the word “sip.”

6.       Say, “Change a letter to make the word “sup.”

7.       Say, “Change a letter to make the word “sum.”

8.       Say, “Change a letter to make “pum,” add a letter to make the word “pump”

9.       Put the remaining three letters “kin” on the end, and ask “Can you tell me what the secret word is?”  Sound out the word with child, if needed.

Reading

Preparation:

Make a poster with poem “Five Little Pumpkins”

“Five Little Pumpkins sitting on a gate.

The first one said, “Oh my it’s getting late”

The second one said, “There are witches in the air.”

The third one said, “But we don’t care.”

The fourth one said, “Let’s run and run and run.”

The fifth one said, “I’m ready for some fun.”

“Ohhh,” went the wind.  Out went the light.

And five little pumpkins rolled out of sight.

Materials:

Poem

Orange crayon

Yellow crayon

Teaching:

Letter Learner:

1.        Read the poem together 2-3 times.  Do a finger play with it.

2.       Have your child find and color all the ‘P’s” orange.

3.       Say the word pumpkin together.  Listen to the two /p/ sounds.

4.       Read it through again.  Point to each word as you say it.

5.       Help child point to words with you. (This helps them recognize sounds and words).

Emergent Reader:

1.       Read poem together 2-3 times.

2.       Have child color the word “pumpkin” orange. 

3.       Have child color the word “the” yellow.

4.       Have child point to and say any other words they know.  They can color those words, too.

5.       Say poem again pointing to words. 

6.       Hand child a pointer (wand, pen or pencil with a star attached to it, etc.) and as you say the poem together they point to each word as they say it.  (This is important in helping them connect written word with what they are saying).

Math

Preparation:

Draw or print out four pictures of a fence/gate. Place pumpkin stickers (or glue pumpkin pictures) on the fences on one gate place one pumpkin, on second gate place 2 pumpkins, on third gate place three pumpkins, on fourth gate place four pumpkins.

Materials

4 gates with pumpkins

Pumpkin stickers (or pictures of pumpkins and a glue stick)

Teaching:

1.        Tell child, “Here are some pumpkins on gates, but there aren’t five pumpkins on any of the gates, and the poem says, ‘Five Little Pumpkins.’ Can you put the gates together to create longer gates with five pumpkins on it.”

2.       Have child put the gate with four pumpkins next to the gate with one pumpkin to create a gate with five pumpkins.  Put the two and three pumpkins together.

3.       Have child use pumpkin stickers to make five pumpkins on each of the gates, using the matching gate as a guide for number of pumpkins to place on fence.

Book of the Day:  Pumpkin Circle: The Story of a Garden by George Levenson

1. Read the book to your child, talking about what you are learning as you read.

Science

Preparation:

Buy a pumpkin, cut off the top

Materials

Pumpkin

Teaching:

1.        Using the five senses have your child explore the pumpkin.  Touch the skin, stem, seeds, and inside of pumpkin.

2.       Smell the pumpkin.

3.       Look at the pumpkin, what colors are there? What shapes do they see?

4.       Let them taste something with pumpkin in it (we like eating pumpkin pancakes so we talked about pumpkin pancakes).

** SAVE THE PUMPKIN SEEDS FOR LATER LESSONS**

Art

Preparation

Buy a pumpkin

Materials

Pumpkin

Paint

Paintbrushes

Teaching:

1.        Let your child paint the pumpkin. 

**I wouldn’t recommend using the same pumpkin as the one cut up in “Science” because it makes such a cute decoration, and it will last longer uncut.**