Pumpkin Hammering
Builds on: hand eye coordination, modifying physical force, safety
*This is a supervised activity 

What you'll need:
1 pie pumpkin
1 bag of wooden golf tees
1 child sized wooden hammer
Marker
Safety glasses

What to do:

Use the marker to place dots all around the top part of the pumpkin. Place all but the marker on to the activity table. Make sure everyone is wearing safety glasses before anyone touches anything. Show your Roos how to tap a tee into a dot on the pumpkin using the hammer. Emphasize safety and lay down some safety rules that will end the activity if broken. Then let your Roos have a try with the rest of the tees. There is something about hammers and nails that are just fun for kids. Once they get the hang of it they tend to spend a lot of time hammering in and pulling out tees over and over again.

*While this activity is fun and teaches valuable life skills part of the activity does involve how handle sharp tees and hammers safely. Keep a close eye on the kids to make sure the safety rules you lay down aren't being broken. Learning to use a hammer is just like learning to do anything else so you should expect a mildly banged up finger a few time. They should be tapping fairly lightly because the pumpkin is soft so any injury will be superficial.

Pumpkin Drawing and Cleaning

Builds on: creativity, life skills

What you'll need:

Small pumpkins

Washable markers

Wet wash cloth

What to do:

Set out the materials onto your activity table. Let your kids know that it's ok to use the markers to color on the pumpkins; show them how to do it if they seem unsure. After the pumpkins are completely covered you can show them how to use the wash cloth to wipe off all of the marks. 

Let them repeat this for as long as they seem interested and aren't wandering off to color on everything else in the house. 

The Carrot Seed Farm

The Carrot Seed Farm
Builds on: math, color recognition, fine motor skills

What you'll need:
1 empty cardboard egg carton
green, purple, yellow and orange pipe cleaners
wire cutters
large exacto knife
The Carrot Seed by Ruth Krauss
* optional: 1 bag of Rainbow Carrots from the health food store

What to do:

Turn the egg carton over so that the egg cups are facing up. Use the exacto knife to cut and X into the center of each cup. Use a pencil to force the X open a little more.

Use the wire cutters to cut the all the pipe cleaners into 2 inch pieces. To create a carrot take a green pipe cleaner and a purple pipe cleaner fold them each in half. Twist the two ends of the purple pipe cleaner together to so that you have a loop at the folded end and a point at the twisted end. Finally, thread the green pipe cleaner through the loop of the purple pipe cleaner and twist close to the loop leaving the ends untwisted for the stocks of the carrots. Repeat with all of your other colors until you have 12. Let your Roo have a shot at it to improve their fine motor skills and hand dexterity.

Once you have them all made push the pointed ends through the holes of the egg cups and place it on the activities table. Once you've read The Carrot Seed you can let your Roo pull out all of the carrots and put them back in. Challenge them with color sorting, counting or color pattern questions.

My favorite part about this activity is that kids always comment that carrots are only orange. I get to pull out Rainbow Carrots and explain that there are lots of different colors for carrots and at snack we test all of the different colors to see if they taste any different from the typical orange ones.

Addition activities:

Follow the links below for some of some more carrot activities, by some other awesome bloggers, to go allow with The Carrot Seed

Soda Bottle Carrots: A Very Small Kitchen Garden
Spring Sensory Tub With Carrots
Carrot Fingers
Preschool Carrot Patch Math Activity

The Pumpkin Patch

Pumpkin Patch

Builds on: hand strengthening, sensory development, vocabulary

 

What you'll need:

1 package of cream filled chocolate cookies- cream removed

1 package of candy pumpkins

A large spoon

Rectangular container

Small cultivator/ hand rake

Toy tractor

What to do:

Place just the chocolate cookies into the container and hand your Roo the large spoon while you inconspicuously dispose of the creamy centers...in your mouth. Just kidding. Sort of. Show your Roo how to use the spoon to crack, smash and crumble the cookies into tiny pieces so that it looks like soil. Place the tractor in the "soil" and the opened bag of candy pumpkins on the side with the small cultivator. You can bury the pumpkins and have your kids dig them out. You can read a story about farming or growing pumpkins and then let them reenact it or you can just set them loose and see what happens. Either way it's a fun activity that will help to strengthen little hands with all the smashing and provide a fun dramatic activity with multiple sensory elements. 

*Don't forget to talk about how it smells, feels and even tastes to help develop the senses and build descriptive vocabulary.