Pumpkin Day

At Hadley's preschool conference, one of the things her teacher told me I could work on with her is sequencing and matching. So I created a few activities to do with Hadley that might help out with these concepts.

The first activity was called "Pumpkin Match Up." I bought a couple of sheets of pumpkin stickers from Michael's and put them on index cards. After setting this activity up, I thought that the difference between the pumpkins was pretty subtle for an almost 3 year old to decipher. All the pumpkins were orange, most of them had triangle eyes and noses, and most of them were the same size. I thought trying to match the pumpkins together would get frustrating for Hadley, but she completed the activity in about a minute and a half.

Here she is still in her "pajammies" working away:

Of course, Harper wants to get in on the action, too:

Later in the day, Hadley and I worked on a "Pumpkin Jack Game"that I put together. Last week, we checked out the book Pumpkin Jack by Will Hubbell. It is the story of how a pumpkin goes from seeds, to sprout, to pumpkin. I thought this would be a great story to use as a sequencing activity, so I drew little pictures from the book on index cards, and then had Hadley put them in order on a large pumpkin I drew on a piece of paper.


Hadley and I read the book as she worked on placing each picture in the correct order. This was a tough activity for two reasons: 1)I think that three year olds can sequence about three events at the most, 2) my artwork leaves a ton to be desired. In the above picture, Hadley is having a lot of difficulty placing the picture nearest her elbow because, in her words, "This picture looks like a zebra or a horse and I don't remember a zebra or a horse in the story, Mama." It's supposed to be a frozen leaf.....

Hadley did know that the seeds came first and the pumpkin came last, which impressed me. The other thing that I was surprised by was that after completing this activity, Hadley wanted to read Pumpkin Jack again. I'm wondering if it is because the first time we were reading the book for information and maybe that distracted her from enjoying the story.

After reading the book, we decorated pumpkins. The book seemed like a perfect excuse for this activity, and certainly the time of year is right. I thought carving pumpkins was probably too dangerous this time around, so I bought materials that we could glue on the pumpkins instead. This proved to be a good choice because Hadley wasn't interested in making a face on the pumpkin. She just wanted to decorate it. When I suggested we make eyes and noses for the pumpkins, she didn't want to do that. The only "humanlike" thing she wanted to do was put a bow on the stems. She wanted to name the two larger pumpkins as well. They are named Tim and Jack. (Tim is the main character in the story Pumpkin Jack).

Hadley's infamous line for a mouth. None of her people smile.

Harper couldn't decorate, but she did wear an appropriate outfit for the occasion:

The finished products: