26th October Pumpkin Day

Tomorrow is Pumpkin Day, a day that probably has more significance in the  Northern Hemisphere because there, it is time to harvest pumpkins, but they are very visible here in the Southern Hemisphere because it will soon be Halloween and pumpkins play a big role in Halloween festivities. I have written about this day before, but not for a long time. 

We have a lot of books in the library that feature pumpkins! We have quite a few nonfiction titles because of life cycles and growing, both popular areas of inquiry in Early Childhood Education and a lot of fiction because of Halloween. So this is the time to go all out with a pumpkin display in the library. See what the library has on Pinterest here. There are some fun craft and art activities here to.

Best nonfiction:

Lifecycles and pumpkin information:   

  

• From Seed to Pumpkin  by Wendy Pfeffer             

• Pumpkins  by Robin Nelson

• Pumpkin  by Brenda McHale

• Pumpkins  by Jacqueline Farmer

• Seed, Sprout, Pumpkin Pie by Jill Esbaum

• From Seed to Pumpkin by Crystal Sikkens

• Let's Look at Pumpkins  by Katie Peters

• Pumpkins  by Jacqueline Farmer

• Pumpkin Circle  by George Levenson

• Seed, Sprout, Pumpkin Pie by Jill Esbaum

Halloween non-fiction:

•  Making a  Jack-o'-Lantern: step by step  by Angelique Johnson

• The Story of the Jack O'Lantern  by Katherine Kegan

• Halloween  by Laura Marsh

• Halloween  by Pierre-Marie Valat 

And most importantly fun fiction:

• How Many Seeds in a Pumpkin?  by Margaret McNamara and Brian Karas

• We Planted a Pumpkin by Rob Ramadan

• Five Little Pumpkins by Ben Mantle (there are other versions)

• Christopher Pumpkin by Sue Hendra, Paul Linnet and Nick East

• The Pumpkin Who was Afraid of the Dark by Michelle Robinson and Mike Byrne

• Pick a Pumpkin  by Patricia Toht and Jarvis

• Pumpkin Eye  by Denise Fleming

• Pumpkin Trouble  by Jan Thomas 

And some short chapter books:

• Lottie and Dottie Grow Pumpkins by Claire Burgess

• Invisible Inkling Dangerous Pumpkins  by Emily Jenkins

• Nelson Pumpkins and Aliens  by Andrew Levins 

• Andy Shane and the Pumpkin Trick by Jennifer Richardson Jacobson

• The Pug Who Wanted to be a Pumpkin  by Bella Swift

• Pumpkin Power  by Patricia Cleveland-Peck

• The Pumpkin Project by Katie Smith

26th October National Pumpkin Day

National Pumpkin Day is celebrated in the USA today. It is not so relevant here in Australia as it is Spring, not Autumn, but given it falls in the same week as Halloween and Australian children do seem to have embraced this celebration and there are soft American pumpkins available in our shops so that we too can carve Jack-o-Lanterns it is good to highlight just how many picture books celebrate pumpkins. See my pinterest page for what is in our school library and if you are looking for a good picture book to buy that lends itself to good classroom activities purchase How Many Seeds in a Pumpkin? by Margaret McNamara and Brian Karas.

 

2nd November Halloween aftermath

Just wanted to share two classroom success stories that started with a children's picture book.

Firstly a library activity with a preschool class of four and five year olds.  We read a very short picture book called Say Boo! by Lynda Graham-Barber and Barbara Lehman. It is about a little ghost called Ben who is having trouble saying 'boo' and therefore isn't able to frighten anyone on Halloween. He practises and learns to say other words, all of which rhyme with 'boo'. He learns 'moo', 'coo' and 'whoo' from animals he meets until finally when crying, he realises that he is really saying 'boo hoo' which contains the word 'boo'. The children loved that Ben was struggling with something that they found easy, which I found a bit off putting, but they were equally pleased when he succeeded. We made a list of the rhyming words and then made a white paperbag puppet of a ghost. The children had to name their ghost a name that rhymed with 'boo'. They came up with really good names such as Lou, Sue, Spew, Stu, Choo, Woo, Floo and Prue. When we had made the puppets we 'floated' and 'rustled' round the library and then came back to re-enact the story and the rhyme I borrowed from here. Good fun was had by all.

Secondly, I lent the book, How Many Seeds in a Pumpkin? by Margaret McNamara and G. Brian Karas to a Year 1 teacher at school and suggested she read it and do as Mr Tiffin, the teacher in the book does with his class. She was very excited about it as it fitted in with her unit of work on celebrations and involved a lot of maths. In the book the teacher buys three pumpkins, a big one, a middle-sized one and a smaller one. The children in the class have to predict which will have the most seeds and then in three groups they clean out the insides of the pumpkin and estimate how many seeds they have. They also need to come up with a plan as to how to count them. The next day after the seeds have dried each group gets their seeds back to count. The Year 1 teacher did this with her class and the children are still talking about putting their hands in the pumpkin and what it felt like. They were involved in estimation, skip counting, hypothesising and testing and they had a lot of fun doing it.  If only I could put photos of children on my blog you would see this fun!