Pumpkin Fun

This is probably my favorite way to do a Pumpkin Life Cycle. I printed it out years ago and thanks to Pinterest, just found the printable again!

 

• Pumpkin Life Cycle
1. Use 2 orange paper plates (or cut out 2 orange circles like we did!)
2. Tape a length of green ribbon and a stem to the top of one plate.
3. Staple the two circles together to form a pumpkin pocket.
4. Print, cut out and color the life cycle pieces.
5. Starting with the “seed” at the very end of the ribbon (farthest from the pumpkin) tape the ribbon inside, fold on the dotted line, then staple to secure.
6. Repeat with each piece.
7. Finally, draw a jack-o-lantern face on the large pumpkin.
8. Now you can tuck the vine and life cycle pieces into the pumpkin pocket and pull out each one as you re-tell how a pumpkin grows!

  

• Pumpkin Hunt … these are the pictures from our Plumply, Dumply Pumpkin Hunt (thanks again Rachel!) This was just as much fun as an Easter egg hunt and more fun than I thought it would be in October!
1. Print your lumpy and round pumpkins here.
2. Hide the pumpkins around the yard just like you would an egg hunt. I gave the kids their trick-or-treat buckets and they had a ball running around finding them.
3. Sort the pumpkins into smooth vs. bumpy pumpkins.
4. Sort again by color (I printed a set in orange and a set in yellow)
5. Pumpkin Race … use the same pumpkins!
• Spread the pumpkins out all over the grass.
• Label one bucket with a lumpy pumpkin, a second with a round pumpkin (see bottom, right picture).
• The kids run out, find one pumpkin, run it back and place it in the matching bucket.
• Run out to find another pumpkin, run back….
6. Hide & Switch … let the kid’s take charge
• Have the kids choose one of the sorted buckets (after your pumpkin race)
• Let them hide their pumpkins all around the yard.
• Then have them switch buckets and now find all of the other pumpkins!
7. There are probably a million other things you could do with these. We had a fun afternoon!