Books
Our theme for this week as we psych up for Halloween was pumpkins! Here are the books we borrowed from the library this week. Our favorites were Big Pumpkin and The Ugly Pumpkin.
Hammering Pumpkins
I had seen this activity on Pinterest so often. I thought it was time to give it a try. I bought each of the kids a small pumpkin, and set it out with rubber bands, golf tees and their play hammers. However, if my husband hadn't left his real hammer at work, we would have used that one. The kids enjoyed the challenge though, and we just ended up using a pen to make our initial holes before hammering the tees in.
The kids love their geoboard, so including rubber bands was a fun addition to this activity!
Sink or Float Science Experiment
I provided a bucket of water, as well as a large and small pumpkin. The kids each made a hypothesis about whether the small pumpkin would sink or float.
Then I asked Little M&M to place it in the bucket. Well, he dropped it in there and splashed all of us! But the kids were pretty interested to see that it was floating!
Then we made predictions about the large pumpkin. I assisted Honey Pot it placing it in there, and they were amazed to see it floating too. We discussed what is inside of a pumpkin, and why this happens.
Pumpkin Soup Sensory Bin
It was such a beautiful fall day, so I came up with an idea for a sensory bin at the last minute. I filled two buckets with water (one with a pink color tablet from their bath, one with yellow) and dropped in some pumpkin candies leftover from their quiet bin activity. Then I grabbed some bowls and spoons from the kitchen and let them play to their heart's content.
It had been a while since we'd done an activity like this, and they seemed to really get into it!
Literally!
In addition to all the fun, it was also a nice review on color-mixing. As they scooped water and pumpkins from both bins, the water in each turned orange.
Quiet Bins
Here is our pumpkin-themed bin for this week:
- Our jack-o-lantern felt board
- Pattern blocks with a pumpkin template
- Homemade pumpkin-pie scented playdough, with tools with pumpkin cutters
- Pumpkin candies and toothpicks, to be used for constructing
- Magnetic bingo chips and a pumpkin dot marker template
And here is our non-themed bin for this week:
- Wooden blocks + a die, we take turns rolling the die and adding that number of blocks to our tower. The person with the tallest tower standing wins.
- An ice cream truck lacing card
- Our salt tray. For little M&M, I provided the letters A-E, which he has covered so far at preschool. For Honey Pot, I included all of the sight words she has learned so far in Kindergarten.
- Craft stick puzzles, using the free printable puzzles
And check out our previous pumpkin theme from 2012!
Or one of our super fun Halloween themes:
