P is for pumpkin

This past week we studied pumpkins!!We tried doing "lap books" this week and the boys enjoyed seeing the progress of their creations during the week as the lap book took shape.  It's just a file folder folded differently... filled with different activities. 

Our lapbook contained "My Big Pumpkin Book," "From Pumpkin to Pie" sequencing book, "how a pumpkin grows" sequencing activity, 5 Little Pumpkins book (which we illustrated using thumbprint pumpkins,) My first Letter P book, Letter P tracing page, and "What spices are in a pumpkin pie?"  (I can't remember where I got this one.)

Here they are working on their lap books.


This is the "color blending" activity where they mixed red and yellow paint to find out that it made orange!

There was a cute little poem that went in their lapbooks with the color mash "creation."  (Can't remember where I got this one either.)

We explored spices found in pumpkin pie.  Here the boys smelled each spice and then created a wheel for their folder.


And here are the finished products:



Sorry, forgot to flip this one.  (They decorated them with stickers too.)

I had 3 math-type folders this week that bounced back and forth between the boys each day.  They love being able to choose what they're going to "play."


Our math work folders included:

"Find the missing pumpkin" which has missing numbers.  I laminated the sheets and then the kids use dry erase crayons to write in the missing numbers. Number puzzles (matching pumpkin numbers with number of seeds.) There are 3 games from the packet below (the pumpkin number puzzle, clip cards.  (JJ loves both!!) and the pumpkin vine measure.)



This one includes "How many seeds are in the pumpkin," pumpkin size sorting (both from the packet below,) and the Scarecrow counts the pumpkins.

We used these printables throughout the week. These were awesome. Click on the picture to get to an awesome blog with great stuff.



Most of our language arts this week was based around pumpkins and the letter P too.  We also introduced the words "will" and "for" as sight words.  We used this cute book to find the missing letters in the alphabet.  It is similiar to the missing numbers book, but this one has missing letters.

We also finished reading "The Boxcar Children!!"
Here, the boys expressed what they were going to be for Halloween.

(It appears neither of them will actually BE what they wrote.)

I had the boys use water colors to do some of their worksheets because they get so tired of coloring with crayons.

I've found some great phonics worksheets at schoolsparks.com. 

A favorite for everyone was our morning studying "Peter Peter Pumpkin Eater."  We read the poem and then did this craft project.  Here are the boys reciting the poem and showing their finished projects.


I also used this pumpkin sticker chart to give stickers to the boys when they had "great behavior." 

Each sticker is worth $.05 the next Monday morning.  We will be visiting a store and they will be able to pick out a treat.  They only earned $.40 each... so they'll be learning that they might have to combine their funds to purchase ANYTHING with their money.

For science we did an "observation" activity (from the packet above) exploring a pumpkin using our 5 senses.  They boys enjoyed this one a lot.

JJ is actually "listening" to the pumpkin to see if it makes noise. They explored texture, smell, sound, and more and then marked their findings on a worksheet.

On another day we actually cut into the pumpkins to see what was inside.




The boys labeled the parts of the pumpkin on a worksheet (from the packet above.)  We then proceeded to roast the pumpkin seeds, AND make pumpkin cookies and pumpkin pie. 





And completely unrelated to pumpkins, we studied graphs this week in math so we used our "weather charts" from last week and made a graph of our findings.



I found these cute placemats at Target for $1 for a pack of 4. The kids colored them and used them one night during dinner.




Besides all the worksheets they did, they also did a crayon texture rubbing.

We'll have to try this one again because it didn't work out as well as I'd hoped.

This girl LOVES to color!!! She sits and colors for a majority of our time during homeschool. Excuse the "bed head."


We also enjoyed these stuffed peppers for dinner one night.  SS was convinced they were real pumpkins. 


It was really fun having the pumpkin theme all week.  For me, themes make school work so much more fun!  I have lots of fun things planed for next week!!