During October I like to introduce the children to the concept of life cycles using the book It's Pumpkin Time by Zoe Hall. This book is a great one for introducing children to the various stages of pumpkin growth. My assistant, Miss Michelle, brought in some pumpkins in various stages for the children to see. Most of them were very surprised to see the green pumpkin since they've only ever seen the orange ones.
As a follow-up project I have set up a Pumpkin Life Cycle activity in the classroom. It is set up on top of a shelf just inside my classroom door. The children sit at the two white tables to do this work.
On the far right is a basket with paper plates on which I've written "Pumpkin Life Cycle" with a Sharpie marker. Next is a basket of life cycle sequence pictures and a basket of the colored pencils needed for this work. I used pictures that I downloaded and printed from here. I just reduced them on the copy machine and cut and pasted them out of order in a vertical row (I omitted the pumpkin pie picture). I was able to get 4 vertical rows on a standard-sized sheet of copy paper which really reduced the amount of paper I had to copy.
Next is a basket with scissors for cutting the pictures, a pencil for writing names on the paper plate, a bowl with glue sticks and a tray with gluing mats.
When I presented this work I told the children to color their pictures first before cutting them out. The pictures are pretty tiny when cut. After cutting the pictures, they lay them out on the plate and have a teacher check their work before gluing the pictures down. They can refer to my sample as a reference.
When finished they are able to take their "wheel" home and talk to their families about the seed, sprout, vine, flower, green pumpkin, orange pumpkin, and jack-o-lantern........which is filled with seeds which can be planted starting the whole cycle all over again.
I also love the plate idea. "From Seed to Pumpkin" by Wendy Pfeffer is a very good pumpkin life cycle book as well. At first glance I thought it would be too technical, but my 2 & 3 year old boys love it.
Posted by: Brittany | October 21, 2009 at 02:11 PM
I like the idea of using a paper plate as a base. So organised! And it embrases the concept of cycle as well. Very clever.
Posted by: SmartPumpkin'sMom | October 21, 2009 at 12:11 PM
Are you familiar with the book "Pumpkin Jack"? It would be another great companion story for this activity.
Posted by: Maryanne | October 21, 2009 at 07:58 AM