Pumpkins Are Everywhere!

We are gearing up for the Halloween preschool frenzy as we start to wind down our Fall Unit.  Pumpkins invaded our preschool classroom!  The kids loved the pumpkin play clay that was made out of a can of pumpkin puree, cornstarch and pumpkin spice.  The room smelled delicious as the kids made pumpkin creations using google eyes, sticks, black beans, green pipe cleaners and curling ribbon, colored plastic straws and yellow beads.  We also used that same clay to practice rolling balls to fill up a pumpkin playdough mat.  We played a pumpkin dice game with the numbers 1, 2, & 3.  During circle time we pulled a magnetic letter out of a pumpkin bucket and then found the same letter on the ActivBoard.  When they located the letter, the made an orange dot (pumpkin) to cover the letter.  We used our pincer fingers to pick up and fill pumpkin ice cube trays and our strong hands to pound golf tees into a pumpkin with a hammer.  We matched pumpkin faces, built pumpkin floor puzzles, and created pumpkin potato head people with real small pumpkins!  We had a giant pumpkin game board we rolled a dice and moved our pieces to the end and a pumpkin number line vine (boy that was a mouthful!).  We also let loose all of the wonderful milk weed seeds you sent in.  The kids had a blast letting them fly!  We filled up the playground with all the white fluff!

Apples continued for a bit more this week now that we found our missing plastic balls!  We pretended that the red, yellow and green balls were apples.  The blue balls were rotten apples and the orange were pumpkins.  Mrs. D and Mrs. Hill spilled all of the apples and the kids ran around chasing the apples and sorting them into the correct colored bins.  We took turns using snowball scoops to pick up the balls.  They had a blast and we repeated the activity several times!  Below you can see how we matched pumpkin patterns and pumpkin face letters.  We used our strong fingers to put ribbons into a soda jar, pick up small pumpkin and halloween things with tweezers, lace up pumpkin shapes (not pictured), and put pumpkins onto a curvy straw.  We played pumpkin shape lotto, put together popsicle stick pumpkin puzzles, and played in a pumpkin sensory bin. 

During circle time, we learned the Five Little Pumpkins fingerplay, where the lights go out!  It was actually Mrs. Hill being sneaky, but it took the kids several times before they figured out the magic of the lights going out during our song!  We went pumpkin picking in a pretend pumpkin patch and had to follow the movement directions written on the pumpkins (such as touch your head and then turn around).  We sang a fun song about turning a pumpkin into a jack'o lantern and some others too.  We had fun with a book on CD, Big Pumpkin, one of Mrs. D's favorites!  The AM kids got to act out the story wearing witch, ghost, vampire, mummy, and bat hats!  The PM kids will get to do that next week.  I will be trying to include a link on our blog of the story.  Check it out!