Saturday, October 29, 2011

Favorite Pumpkin Books and a Trip to the Pumpkin Patch

We took a fun trip to the pumpkin patch...a couple weeks ago...it's taken me a while to get to this post.
There's a family here in town that has their three daughters raise pumpkins all year long and then the girls get to keep their earnings.  The youngest sister is in Firecracker's class, so Firecracker had been begging for weeks to go get pumpkins from her friend.



I'm so glad we did, because the kids' had a great time...and of course it's always nice that the money is going to some young girls who have worked really hard.  We've never taken the kids to a "real" pumpkin patch.
Last year some friends let us choose some extra pumpkins from our garden and in the years before that, we just got them at the supermarket or grew them ourselves.

Of course, once they'd chosen one pumpkin, they wanted to keep on going.  We ended up coming home with 5 pumpkins total...one for each family member.
We did not come home with either of these huge pumpkins...although the kids would have loved to.
And the kids are holding their ears because they were waiting...
...waiting for the pumpkin canon to go off.
Now we've got the job of carving those 5 pumpkins today...or rather Hubby has that job while I have the job of trying to pull together 4 Halloween costumes...at least Hubby has his figured out.

And I thought I'd share a few of our favorite pumpkin books and activities with last year in case you missed them...Some of these might be too late to inspire you for this year...but they're all really easy and some of them could still make fun books/activities leading up to Thanksgiving.

Pumpkin Soup by Helen Cooper is a cute book about 3 friends learning to cooperate with each other and be flexible as they make pumpkin soup.  We read this book when we made pumpkin soup in the crock pot to go along with the book.  We put a spider in the soup to go along the kindergarden S chant, but there's nothing "Halloween" in this books, so this could still be a great read.

Pumpkin Heads by Wendell Minor is another really fun book.  It has lots of different Jack O Lantern ideas, and I made some easy felt pumpkin/shape toys for the kids to play with and rearrange their own pumpkin faces.

If you're carving pumpkins today like we are, it's definitely not too late to take advantage of the printable pumpkin seed packets that I made to go along with Pumpkins Pumpkins by Jeanne Titherington.  This is a book about the life cycle of pumpkins, so it could definitely still be appreciated in the weeks after Halloween (or even in the spring at planting time).

It's still not too late to make some mason jar pumpkins.  These have been making their rounds on blogs for a couple years.  We made them when we read Five Little Pumpkins, but they could also go with just about any pumpkin book...or on their own.

And finally, another favorite book at our house is The Ugly Pumpkin by Dave Horowitz.  This one starts before Halloween and ends in Thanksgiving, so it's a perfect book to read in November.  It also has a great message about being yourself even if it means being a little different.  This books also goes well with a felt pumpkin activity, like the one we did with Pumpkin Heads.

7 comments:

  1. It looks like they sure had a lot of fun. When the grandkids were in school I helped out on a trip to the pumpkin patch a few times. Hayride back to the patch and each child got to choose a pumpkin to take home. They loved it and I have to admit I thought it was pretty fun too.

    Now the Great grandkids are at the age that they love going.

    Karan

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  2. What a wonderful pumpkin patch! The kids look great. I love the photos of the girls in the cutout figures.

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  3. How fun! That's really cool that the girls raise the pumpkins themselves.

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  4. What fun books! And the pumpkin patch raised by the girls sounds like a great idea all around!

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  5. Love all your creative ideas. The soup is really cool too!

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  6. I love your book choices! The soup sounds great!

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  7. We always look forward to our annual visit to the pumpkin patch!! Love all the book activities!! I'd love for you to link up at my TGIF Linky Party - http://livinglifeintentionally.blogspot.com/search/label/Linkey%20Parties
    Beth =-)

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