Five Little Pumpkins Activities

In my last post, I talked about 10 Fun Fall and Halloween Songs and Fingerplays that you can do with your child/client/students. I mentioned at the end of my post that the fingerplay Five Little Pumpkins has an array of activities that can go along with it, and I would just love to share some with you! But first, here are the lyrics for this fingerplay again:

Five Little Pumpkins
(Fingerplay, no tune)
Five little pumpkins sitting on a gate,
The 1^st one said, “Oh my, it’s getting late.”
The 2^nd one said, “There are witches in the air.”
The 3^rd one said, “But we don’t care.”
The 4^th one said, “Let’s run and run and run.”
The 5^th one said, “I’m ready for some fun.”
Whewwwww went the wind & out went the lights,
And the five little pumpkins rolled out of sight.

Make a Mini Book

One of my favorite websites to get free stuff that I adapt for therapy is DLTK Kids dot com. They have a free printable mini book for Five Little Pumpkins. They have two versions: color and black and white (which your child can color themselves!). You can print out our own copy HERE. You can also print out a different mini book of this story at Prekinders dot com HERE.

Make a Visual

At Preschool Printablesyou will find some printable graphics (a gate and five pumpkins). They come in color or black and white. There are several different things you can do with these.

• Print on paper/card stock and laminate so they can be used over and over

Print on felt to be used on a felt board

• Print several copies on paper so each child can have their own set to manipulate
• Use them with just one child, or with a group of children to work on counting, vocabulary (pumpkins, witches, numbers one through five, big/small, first/last, colors) following directions, answering “wh” questions, answering yes/no questions, etc.

You see that I chose to laminate mine…for therapy I just like the fact that I can wipe them down after use

Make Finger Puppets

Another fun activity can be to make finger puppets to act out the story. There are a few different ways to do this. First this is an ADORABLE craft by Craft Jr. dot com that I think E and I will do this week!! They have several different Halloween finger puppets here…as well as other fun crafts. You can make 5 of them for the Five Little Pumpkins story!

picture from craftjr.com

My Daughter E inspired this one. I had bought these pumpkin charm things at Joanne’s a couple weeks for a project, but I hadn’t used them. E found them and wanted to play with them…she started hanging them on her fingers. That’s when I thought: “What a great idea for finger puppets! Our fingers are the gate!”

Another great finger puppet activity you need to check out is from Creative Family Fun.

Get Hands On

Get yourself five REAL pumpkins (I suggest of the small variety) and put them on your “gate” (real or fake). You can draw or paint faces on them, carve them, etc. Get pumpkins in different colors and sizes, and you can talk about the colors, the size (big/medium/small, biggest vs smallest, have the child put them in order from biggest to smallest). When you draw faces on, you can talk about shapes (i.e. triangles for eyes, circle for nose, cresent for mouth, rectangle for teeth, etc).

Get Crafty

You know I love using crafts to expand speech and language skills, and there are all kinds of crafts that can be used to go along with this book. Here are a couple fun ones:

First, a fun, simple (and messy!) one from Nurture Store: Yarn Pumpkins.

Next, check out this simple and great way to use your old baby food jars from Toddler Approved. Make sure to check out her post for many other ideas to go along with this book.

And lastly, can you believe how cool these painted pumpkins are from In Lieu of Preschool?? You could use mini pumpkins and do 5 of them to keep with the 5 Little Pumpkins Theme.

Talk about Pumpkin Facts

Talk with your child all about pumpkins! Here are a couple resources for pumpkin facts.
The Virtual Vine Facts and Activities
Random House Facts
Merced Nutrition Facts and Activities

Other Resources

Like I said, the possibilities are really endless…but here are a couple additional links to some other sites that have some pretty cool activities relating to pumpkins:
Mrs. Nelson’s Class Pumpkin Unit
Teaching Heart\’s Pumpkin Unit
First School Pumpkin Them

Well there you have it! A whole bunch of fun activities to go along with Five Little Pumpkins. Remember, while doing these activities with your child (or student/client) be sure to use lots of language and talk about the following:

• Talk about each step when making a mini book, or doing a craft (i.e. “First we are going to cut out the pages, then we are going to staple them together…”).
• Talk about attributes: colors, sizes, quantity…compare and contrast them i(i.e. “This pumpkin is the BIGGEST”)
• Ask simple “wh” questions while you are doing the activities (i.e. How many? Which one is bigger? Which pumpkin is your favorite? What color is a pumpkin? What shape is the moon? What shape are that pumpkin’s eyes?)
• When you are done, review what you JUST did! See if your child can recall some of the steps.
• HAVE FUN!!!!!!!!