Five little pumpkins!

We’ve been learning a lot about fall and a big part of fall is of course dressing up during Halloween and carving pumpkins. Children have been talking a lot about  it and how their costumes are going to look. So, I thought the pumpkin topic was perfect for this week.

Last Tuesday we learned lots about this fruit and we even carved one up. When we sat for Big Kids Club we received a letter from Polly the fairy saying she had placed a pumpkin somewhere around Buddings, but forgot where she left it! So we went on a pumpkin hunt. We were looking for it until one of the children said “It’s right here!” It was right under the art sink. We all start singing “We found the pumpkin, we found the pumpkin..” They were really excited.

We went back to Big Kids Club and sat on a floor and sang a song called: “Five little pumpkins” and of course danced it out a couple times. After that, we read two books to learn more about pumpkins and how to carve one.

When it was time to carve the pumpkin I had some very special helpers. Some of the children weren’t so convinced about pulling the seeds out but in the end they all gave it a try by using a spoon. Some children like Emily decided to use their hand and didn’t care about getting their hands a bit sticky.

These are some of the things we learned about pumpkins:

• When to plant the seeds? Seeds need to be planted during spring time by making little hills in the soil and placing two or three seeds in each hill.

• How long can pumpkin vines grow?  They can grow as long as 9 meters.

• We make moats around pumpkin hills but, why?  Moats help the soil stay wet. Wet soil is good for the seeds. It keeps them from drying out.

• During summer yellow flowers appear and bees spread pollen from one flower to another. Female flowers have a bump and it will grow to be a pumpkin one day.

• Pumpkins take about one hundred days to grow. The biggest pumpkin can gain up to 25 pounds in a day.

• During fall season cool air and short days tell the pumpkins to stop growing. Their skin turns orange (most of the time) and the leaves turn yellow. It’s harvest time!

• Most ripe pumpkins are orange, but some kinds are green, white, blue, or red.

• All pumpkins are green when they first begin to grow.