It's Pumpkin Day, Mouse!

Last Halloween, Tate became OBSESSED with this book. I remember him asking me over and over to read it until the point where I had it memorized (not that hard to do with a board book, but you get the point). After a while I could no longer muster the energy to use any expression. I was sure he would eventually get bored but I swear we could have read this book all day if I was able. 

We have had it up on his bookshelf for a while and now that Halloween is right around the corner I couldn’t resist using it as a lesson. It really is such a cute book. Maybe it’s not cute enough to read it twenty times in a row, but it is definitely lesson-worthy! 

To transition into learning time, the boys started out by coloring little pumpkins with different expressions found here. We stopped and sang the songs we always sing and then I read the book. During the second read, I had the boys find the pumpkin that matched the face/expression of the pumpkin in the book. 

After we read the story I taped larger print outs of the same pumpkins throughout the room. Then I asked the boys where certain pumpkins were (“Where is the sad pumpkin?”) and they would run over to wherever that pumpkin was. When they got to the right pumpkin I asked them to make the same expression as the pumpkin. We played this enough times for them to go to each pumpkin two times. 

Then we played Memory with pumpkin printables found here. Chase wasn’t a huge fan (he’s six months younger than Tate and isn’t quite to that stage yet!) but I played with Tate later in the afternoon and he loved it. Every time he found a match he had to make the expression of whatever match he found.

We ended with a little pumpkin mosaic craft. This was a little challenging for their age levels so we had to adapt it a bit. We tore the paper into strips and then the boys tore them into smaller pieces. We also found that it was faster to put glue in large sections and have them place the pieces in those sections rather than gluing each individual piece. Does that make sense? 

I forget how much of a difference a month or two can make at this age and need to focus on choosing activities that can be adapted for both Tate and Chase, given their age difference. Luckily, the boys are too young to realize my little failures and are just excited to play together. 

It would have been fun to end the lesson with pumpkin carving but when I thought about trying to carve a pumpkin and deal with all the gooey guts without my husband there to help I decided a paper craft would be the better choice. Props to all you moms who are brave enough to do this with little kids all on your own and don’t mind slimy orange stuff getting all over your kitchen/children/floor/etc. I salute you!