pumpkin week

We decided to make this week of homeschooling our pumpkin week. In addition to reading all about the life cycle of pumpkins, and plenty of fun pumpkin picture books too, we've examined a pumpkin patch, cooked a pumpkin, counted pumpkin seeds, and done plenty of pumpkin art.

We roasted most of the seeds from our little pie pumpkins, and saved a few for crafts.


We observed the difference in the pumpkin flesh after baking.


We stirred some spices, juice and sugar into our pumpkin mush.


And we watched our pumpkin mush turn into pumpkin butter. We decided to save one jar for our Thanksgiving dinner!

We practiced writing the word pumpkin.

And coloring pumpkins.


We told pumpkin rhymes (that I learned at the Steiner Institute).

In my garden grows a pumpkin

orangy and gold.

Along came a little mouse
so the story goes.

Nibble, nibble went the mouse;

'til the pumpkin was a house:

two small windows

and a door

and lots of feathers on the floor.

There the mouse slept well, I know,

even when the cold winds blow.

Finn needle felted his own pumpkin.


And even though I tried to convince him to put it on our nature table for everyone to enjoy,


he decided to string it and hang it in his bedroom window, "to glow in the sun" as he put it.


Finn also drew the rough outline of a pumpkin on watercolor paper and then painted his pumpkin and the background.


(I love how the pumpkin looks like it's glowing.) And we decided to add some seeds to the pumpkin's tummy.