Don’t you just love the fall?! That smell of pumpkin spice just fills the air with goodness! It is also that time of year that many teachers pull on their rain boots and drudge through pumpkin patch farms with their class. With that we teachers are busy teaching all things pumpkin! So you may be asking yourself… how can I teach it? How can I make it different then so many other teacher lesson? What pumpkin literature book should I use? Are there YouTube links you could show my students? The answer is yes to all of the above. You can tune into my Facebook page to hear all about how I teach pumpkins. Or you can read through this post that contains…FREEBIES plus a sneak peek of my pumpkin unit.
Okay first let’s talk anchor charts. I like doing the Life Cycle of a Pumpkin Anchor Chart, but I also like to include sequencing, and the Parts of a Pumpkin.
I also always have my vocab anchor chart no matter what unit I am doing. It is so important to teach my students the vocabulary I am going to be using as I teach them. Other wise what I am saying might go over their heads. I want to make sure they also interact with the vocabulary. That’s why I like to laminate my vocabulary teaching cards and pull them on and off, and can then use them as a center station.
I also like to pull sequence of events in when I am teaching Pumpkins as there are so many different areas I can direct this with pumpkins; The Life Cycle, Pumpkin Carving, or a pumpkin literature story. There are so many different stories that I can choose, but my personal favorite is Pumpkin Jack by. Will Hubbell. It is a darling story about a boy named Tim. He has to put his beloved Jack-o’-lantern Pumpkin Jack out in the yard because he is rotten. Pumpkin Jack decomposes, and is left just as seeds. Tim discovers a pumpkin sprout in the spring. The book then takes you through the life cycle of a pumpkin. Yes that’s right this story is pulling in the life cycle AND you can do sequence of events. SCORE! Below you can see my sequence of events anchor chart for Pumpkin Jack along with the sequence of Event craft that goes along with Pumpkin Jack.
(aff link)
Next I want to dig deeper in the Life Cycle of a Pumpkin. I have a focus wall poster, but I also have an anchor chart in order to bring it to life as I teach it. I have laminated images of the parts of the life cycle. Again I use a tape that makes it easy to take it on and off, that way I can again turn this anchor chart into a sorting center for stations by simply taking the cards off and the students put them back up. (All these cards are in my Pumpkin Activity Pack)
I also love doing “mobiles” in my classroom. So I created a Life Cycle Mobile. These are simple, but are fabulous to hang from the ceiling through the fall as it contains your student’s beautiful artwork AND writing.
I am also big on having foldable books that students read. Having taught in areas that were very poor I have found the importance of having paper books. These are great as they can take them home and read them where they often have no books at home. And the bonus of them being a printable book they don’t have to bring them back! I do want to see there comprehension of the short emergent reader so I generally have them do comprehension questions like picture below. This is all available in my pack.
So now what about going to the pumpkin patch… okay you guys here is where the freebie comes in. Here is a fun sheet that they graph things they see at the pumpkin patch! Now naturally the pumpkin part will get filled to the top, but it is fun for them too what else they see. Right click the image below and save it to your computer to print it!
Now your students have had a wonderful time at the pumpkin patch. They are now back in the classroom. Time for them to write! Write all about the pumpkin patch! Once they are done with the writing it is glued onto a pumpkin and a little farm boy or girl that they make to look like them is glued above. How cute are they below?! I mean really! Again this is all in my pumpkin pack.
So I have one more freebie for y’all… yes one more! This freebie is actually already in my store! It has been there for about a year! It is my Number bond/ Math Mountain Headbands! This is a fun way to tie in a little Pumpkin Spice with your math this fall! Students make the number bond out of pumpkins! Check it out below! Click the image and it will take you to my store where you can download it for free!!
Okay… now there is even more in my pack! Yes more in my pumpkin pack. Click the image below to check it out in my store.
