Pumpkin Themed Play Date and a Blog Hop

We invited some friends over on Saturday for a pumpkin play date!  It was a great way to celebrate the first day of fall and definitely got us in the mood for fall.  The best part? It was fun for the kids and super easy to put together!

Pumpkin Books:

We started the play date with a pumpkin story, the book Apples and Pumpkins by Anne Rockwell.  The story follows a little girl and her family as they enjoy many fun fall activities.  This is one of my favorite pumpkin stories for both the simplicity of the plot and the charming illustrations.  It’s a great way to introduce fall activities.

Other great pumpkin books include:

• Ready for Pumpkins by Kate Duke
• Patty’s Pumpkin Patch by Teri Sloat
• How Many Seeds in a Pumpkin? by Margaret McNamara
• From Seed to Pumpkin by Wendy Pfeffer
• The Legend of Spookley the Square Pumpkin by Joe Troiana

Pumpkin Cooking:

After a story we went into the kitchen to make pumpkin butter!  We modified a recipe from Very Best Baking, in place of the cloves we used 1/4 teaspoon of nutmeg and were upped the cinnamon to 1/2 teaspoon.  Each of the kids picked a measuring cup and added the ingredient that corresponded with that amount.  This was a good opportunity to talk about fractions and baking measurements.  Then the other mom cooked the delicious-smelling pumpkin butter while we continued to play.

Pumpkin Science:

Next we were pumpkin scientists.  I gave each kid a mini pumpkin and asked them to make some observations.  Once we were familiar with our pumpkins we moved on to pumpkin hypotheses.  The kids took turns prediciting whether or not their pumpkins would sink or float and if it was going to be heavier or lighter than another object.  They did a great job and we were interested to see that while all of our little pumpkins floated some were more submerged than others.  We observed that the rounder pumpkins sank a little more into the water than the flatter ones.

Pumpkin Craft:

After experimenting we dried off our pumpkins and made pumpkin people!  They used markers, yarn, and googly eyes to create their own little pumpkin person to take home with them.  The younger two really liked to use the googly eyes and ended up with many eyed pumpkin people.

Pumpkin Vocabulary:

While our glue was drying we sat back down to talk a little more about pumpkins and fall.  The kids brainstormed autumn themed words and I wrote them on pumpkin cut-outs and discussed why they were fall words.  Then my husband hid them around our yard and the kids found and read/were read the words.  They had lots of fun and keep wanting to play over and over again.

Before everyone went home we tried our pumpkin butter on some graham crackers and it was a success! Yummy pumpkin butter and fun pumpkin activities–we are ready for fall!

This is a Play Date blog hop! 

With these fun hosts:

Go Kid Yourself

All Done Monkey

Learn With Play and Home

Coffee Cups and Crayons (me)

Critters and Crayons