Letter of The Week p !

Pumpkin p !

You had to know this was coming! I waited to do this activity until this week because we had a special day out at the pumpkin patch with close friends  today. Piggy backing learning on special events like a trip to the pumpkin patch is a wonderful way to peak interest and make multiple connections, from art to book to real life!

1. Gather your materials. You will need a neutral colored piece of construction paper, a green piece of construction paper, orange paint, a paint brush,glue, scissors ,  green and brown markers and a pumpkin stencil ( cookie cutter) if needed.
2. Start by drawing or tracing a handful of pumpkins with the brown marker.
3. Write a large lowercase p on the green paper.
4. Have your child paint the pumpkins, today we used a tiny fine brush, I like to mix it up for my son but you can use anything, fingers, sponges… it’s your choice! Let dry.
5. Hand them the P and draw the vines, this is when going to the pumpkin patch came in handy. At the pumpkin patch today the vines were everywhere, and so my son was able to connect that to art time!
6. When the pumpkins are dry cut out.
7. Cut out the p.
8. Add the glue . Glue stick or white glue , we have made the move to glue stick because my son is finally not eating everything. I was worried he’d bite off a huge chunk and choke before now.
9. Add the pumpkins and let dry.

Books

Jeoffry’s Halloween by Mary Bryant Bailey is written in verse that is beautiful and the rhymes are impressive but I could not bribe my son to sit and read it. It was too sophisticated for him and I think probably too sophisticated for most children young enough to enjoy a picture book. I hate admitting that because I think the words coupled with the foggy dreamlike illustrations by Elizabeth Sayles are worth a look. I hope I am wrong , but I would not suggest this book for a preschool circle time , or even to be read one on one with the under 4 crowd.

In The Haunted House by Eve Bunting is the type of story that you aren’t sure if you should or shouldn’t read to your 3 year old. Well maybe it’s just me. I am easily frightened, I can’t even watch commercials for scary movies , so I was leary about reading this book to my son. He opened it and scanned it himself and then brought it over to me so I gave it a try. He loved it. The book takes the reader through a haunted house, and each scary thing it houses. While reading it my son would stop look at me and ask ” Is that just pretend?” ” Is that just a costume?” which made me feel better about reading it since he will see some scary costumes and if the idea that they aren’t real is concrete in his mind hopefully come Halloween his resilience will be a little stronger. At the end of the book you see the little girl and her dad coming out of the haunted house, she is exhilarated, but he looks terrified! My son loved that detail, great message about it being ok to be scared!

The Pumpkin Fair by Eve Bunting is a much cheerier look at Halloween than the last two selections.  In this book the reader follows a little girl to the pumpkin fair where all sorts of fun things are going on. Pumpkin bowling, pumpkin basket ball and even pumpkin seed spiting contests! There are pumpkins of all sizes to buy but the little girl has brought her own that she grew herself. When awards are given out she is sure that her little bumpy p won’t win a thing but …. will it? I really liked this book, I liked the celebration it contained and the message about not having to be the biggest or most beautiful to be worthy and recognized.  This was a big hit at our house too.

Get Thee To A Pumpkin Patch!

This time of year pumpkin patches spring up all over the place, in our area they are farms, in many places church parking lots are converted and even many supermarkets have a large enough selection to work in a pinch. Explore the pumpkins, notice the differences, the different colors, textures…  My son took a liking to this one small shape of pumpkin and picked as many as could fit in our wagon. We were luck enough to also see some green ones on the vines, which opened up a little lesson about a pumpkins as plants not just Halloween decorations.

Make some pumpkin pancakes!

I made these for dinner the other night and we had the left overs for breakfast today to start off our pumpkin themed day !Check out the recipe over at my other blog don’t eat the paint.