Homeschool Theme of the Week: Pumpkins!

Our "Pumpkin" homeschool theme has to be one of my favorites.  :)  Of course, I could probably say that about almost every theme we do that is autumn related.  :)  Here are some pictures of a few of our activities:

When I caught sight of a pumpkin carved house on Pinterest, my imagination took off and I knew we should make one.  Can't you just see all the possibilities for fun dramatic play, writing stories, etc.!  :)  I wasn't disappointed - my daughter loved it!

I knew a story activity would be just the thing to go along with our pumpkin home so I gave her a little writing prompt and this is where she ended up (see picture below - and yes, she wrote  this herself with very little help from me)...

During the week, we also made and used three spinners and a graph to decide how we would carve the classic pumpkin face.   We chose four different eye, nose, and mouth possibilities.  Each day we spun the spinners and graphed the results.  At the end of the week, the eye, nose, and mouth with the most squares colored were declared the winners and carved into another of our pumpkins!

I had been eyeing the dyed pumpkin seed pictures and jewelry showing up on blogs and Pinterest and finally decided our pumpkin themed week would be a great time to try making something as well.  I dyed the seeds (I found that the method of boiling them for about 15 minutes in food coloring and water worked best for us), and my daughter used some watercolor paints to make a sky, ground, and bare tree.  When the painting was dry, she began gluing the colorful seed "leaves" to her picture and I just love how it turned out!  Notice all the leaves falling from the tree...

We enjoyed some free printables from www.2teachingmommies.com and www.homeschoolcreations.blogspot.com and used some fun pumpkin marshmallows for one of the graph activities.  Of course, sampling these delicacies was a must following the activity's completion!  :)

For a fun and simple math activity, I made a pumpkin patch out of candy pumpkins and some twisted green pipe cleaners (I wrote the words on the plate using food safe markers).  Each day my daughter would have to brainstorm an idea of how one pumpkin was lost or taken from the patch.  I would write down her idea on a story form I had made up beforehand, and she would write a number sentence to match it (see pictures below).  Then she would eat the pumpkin!  :)

For a bit of science and computer fun, we made a pumpkin book from a piece of thick cardboard, and my daughter typed out words describing the inside and outside of a pumpkin.  We then printed, cut, and glued the words into the appropriate places of the book.  My daughter also added some yarn for pumpkin strings and real pumpkin seeds onto the portion of the book depicting the inside of a pumpkin.  Finally, we added the sticker letters to the front to make a title for the book.  I was super pleased with how cute it turned out!  :)  See for yourself...

We also completed an art activity to go along with one of our pumpkin books:  "The Very Best Pumpkin".  This is such a sweet book, and I love the tea-stained style illustrations!  We each chose a favorite picture or part of the story to illustrate and then made our own copy of the picture using real tea and paints and crayons!  I hope to post a more detailed tutorial later this week...  

This is a picture my daughter painted of her favorite illustration in the story!  I LOVE it!  

Definitely a keeper...  :)

Need some good book suggestions?  Take a look at some of these!  :)

Linking up to:
http://www.abcand123learning.com/
http://www.cleanandscentsible.blogspot.com/
www.gingersnapcrafts.com
http://sweetpeasandbb.blogspot.com
www.bearrabbitbear.blogspot.com
www.momontimeout.com
www.houseofhepworths.com
www.noordinarybloghop.blogspot.com
http://homeschoolcreations.blogspot.com/
www.whipperberry.com
http://www.sunscholars.blogspot.com/
www.tatertotsandjello.com
http://momto2poshlildivas.blogspot.com