Pumpkins Unit Study for Preschool & Kindergarten Students

Your little ones will love this sweet introduction to pumpkins this autumn with this Pumpkins Unit Study for young learners.

In this Pumpkin Unit Study, kindergartner and preschool students will complete hands-on activities to explore pumpkins through math, science, language arts, and more!

Your youngest learners will explore the life cycle of a pumpkin, the color orange, opposites words, personification, measurement, counting by 10s, emergent literacy, nursery rhymes, cooperation, nature in the autumn, and much more in this fun, multi-subject Pumpkin Unit Study.

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Book Recommendations for Your Pumpkin Unit Study

Fiction

*The Biggest Pumpkin Ever by Steven Kroll

*The Berenstain Bears and the Prize Pumpkin by Stan & Jan Berenstain

Note: While Halloween is briefly mentioned in both of the books above, it is not the central theme of the book and can easily be edited out while you are reading aloud.

*Peter Peter Pumpkin Eater and Friends by Wendy Straw OR A Mother Goose Nursery Rhyme book such as Richard Scarry’s Best Mother Goose Ever by Richard Scarry OR Favorite Nursery Rhymes from Mother Goose by Scott Gustafson

Non-Fiction

*From Seed to Pumpkin: A Fall Book for Kids (Let’s-Read-and-Find-Out Science 1) by Wendy Pfeffer

OR *The Pumpkin Book by Gail Gibbons

Required Resource *

Library List for Bedtime Reading

It’s Pumpkin Time! by Zoe Hall

The Pumpkin Patch Parable by Liz Curtis Higgs

How Big Could Your Pumpkin Grow? by Wendell Minor (Some pumpkins have jack o’lantern faces, but doesn’t call them that. Also has a witch flying across the moon on one page. But still an interesting book that could led to some rabbit trails of exploration i.e. county fairs, pumpkin boats)

Green Living & Recycling: Too Many Pumpkins by Linda White or if your family does Jack O’Lanterns: Pumpkin Jack by Will Hubbell

Online Resources for Your Study of Pumpkins

Watch the life cycle of a pumpkin from Scholastic

Parents can get a refresher about pumpkins and their life cycle with Andrea’s Notebook. Kids can use this printable Pumpkin Life Cycle activity.

Looking for a way to include your littlest ones? Check out these pumpkin activities for toddlers

You and your older kids will appreciate the amazing pumpkin facts from True Food TV.

Pumpkins Unit Study Activities for Preschool & Kindergarten Students

Character Study

After reading The Biggest Pumpkin Ever, talk to your kids about cooperation. What does it look like to cooperate with a brother, sister, or friend?

Then you can talk about envy and poor sportsmanship after you’ve read The Berenstain Bears & the Prize Pumpkin. Play a short game and talk about what the winner and the loser should each say to one another when the game is finished (“Good game!”)

Language Arts

Discuss personification (when we make an animal or object can talk or act like people), and how the animals in both fiction stories are given human features.

Write a short story about something big that grew in the garden. Use the I Grew a Pumpkin So Big… worksheet in the Pumpkin Unit Study Bundle.

Discuss the use of repetition throughout The Biggest Pumpkin Ever. What word or line does the author repeat?

Math

Investigate a real pumpkin. Use the Pumpkin Math Worksheet in the Pumpkin Unit Study Bundle. to measure the circumference (around the pumpkin), height, and weight.

Next, open your pumpkin and remove the seeds. Let your kids count the seeds to see how many there are inside a pumpkin. Place the seeds in piles of ten to practice counting by 10s. Ask your kids why they think there are so many seeds in just one pumpkin.

Help your kiddos learn about sizes and comparison vocabulary with the words: small, medium, big, or small, smaller, smallest using this printable pumpkin size sorting activity.

Sensory & Motor Skills

Build play-dough pumpkins or pretend to make pumpkin pies with this great pumpkin playdough recipe from Natural Beach Living.

Get messy with pumpkin guts and let your kiddos explore pumpkins with ALL of their senses at Whole Child Homeschool

Or for a non-messy option, explore pumpkins and the much-loved pumpkin spice scent with this Pumpkin Spice Sensory Bin from Whole Child Homeschool

Help your kids get their bodies moving! Let them use their bodies to pretend to be a small pumpkin seed in the dirt that grows and goes through all of the life cycle stages of a pumpkin.

Use these instructions from Fun A Day to create a Pumpkin Geoboard for fine motor work.

Science

Use the free Seeds Experiment printable from our sister site to see what pumpkin seeds need to grow (Also included in the Pumpkin Unit Study Bundle).

After reading either From Seed to Pumpkin or The Pumpkin Book, talk about the life cycle of the pumpkin, from seed, root, leaves, flower, fruit, to seed again. Break open a seed, and point out the living part, the embryo, that will grow into a new plant.

Next, use the Pumpkin Life Cycle worksheet in the Pumpkin Unit Study Bundle to put the life stages of a pumpkin in the correct order.

Finally, go for a nature walk and discuss the fall season. Point out the shorter days, the changing colors, the long shadows, the drying grass, etc. Find pictures in the pumpkin books that characterize fall, and make a list using the In Fall, I see… printable in the Free Resource Library.

Phonics & Emergent Literacy

Read and color the Peter, Peter, Pumpkin Eater page in the Free Resource Library. Listen for the long e sound in Peter. Find and circle all of the letter p’s in the rhyme.

Let your student complete the “My Pumpkin is…” Emergent Literacy Booklet in the Pumpkin Unit Study Bundle to work on their emerging literacy and reading skills.

Basic Skills: Opposites & Colors

Let your student “read” her or his “My Pumpkin is…” Emergent Literacy Booklet to you. Ask them questions and talk about the opposites and color words in the book.

Go for a walk around the house or outside and find things that are orange. Using handwriting paper, have children write out the word orange each day. Make a collage of pictures from magazines of orange items, and be sure to include a pumpkin! Have a snack of oranges, carrots, or pumpkin bread.

Art

Learn how red and yellow make orange. Print out the Pumpkin Outline Art Page and place in a shoe box or baking dish. Squirt a little dab each of yellow and red washable paint. Add in 2 or 3 marbles or wooden beads. Let your child tilt the box side to side and back and forth to make the marbles run through the paint, mixing the colors together.

Remove marbles or beads and wash off. Let the paint dry. Cut out the pumpkin and hang to display.

Practical Arts

Roasted pumpkin seeds are delicious and a good source of protein. To roast the pumpkin seeds from your pumpkin follow these directions:

1. Scoop all the seeds you can out of your pumpkin, and place in a colander. Rinse off the pumpkin gook.
2. Lay the seeds out on a few sheets of paper towel and pat them dry.
3. Put the seeds in a bowl and coat them with about a tablespoon of melted butter.
4. Spread the seeds out on a cookie sheet, and sprinkle with salt.
5. Bake them at 225° for 1-2 hours, turning them periodically. Just bake till they are nice and crisp, but not brown or they will taste burnt.

If you don’t have a fresh pumpkin or time to roast your own, look in your grocery store for “pepitas”, which are roasted pumpkin seeds.

Field Trip

Put all of the information together that you and your kids have learned about pumpkins while exploring a local pumpkin patch.

More Free Pumpkin Unit Study & Fall Resources

Be sure to pin this Pumpkins Unit Study post to your favorite Pinterest board so you can find it again later.

And be sure to follow Homeschool Helper Online on Pinterest for 1000s more free homeschooling resources!