Getting to hold and touch a pumpkin is a brand new exciting experience for a little one, so it’s important to follow children’s lead and go at their pace and let them savor the wonderful moments of new experiences like these.
Young Children love holding, touching, carrying, and feeling things, they learn best when their little hands are busy exploring. Not all little ones like the slimy sticky texture of the inside of a pumpkin for pumpkin carving. But they all love the cheery bright colour of an orange pumpkin.
Here are a couple ideas to incorporate some sensory play and learning fun with pumpkins.
Small pumpkins are fun to use with little ones as they are more child-friendly in terms of their size. Small pumpkins that children can hold and carry are more inviting and interesting to explore.
Young children find water-play very calming and relaxing. With the use of a plastic apron to protect their clothing, children love having their own water bowl and sponge and giving their pumpkin a wash. They love the sensation of squeezing water out of a sponge and watching it drip over their pumpkin and roll down. This makes for a fun way to teach about different textures such as ‘rough, smooth, shiny, dry, wet, bumpy, etc.’.
Children also love having a little towel and drying off their pumpkin and turning it over and searching for any remaining drops of water. They love observing the differences in the surface of their pumpkin between ‘dry’ and ‘wet’.
Children love painting their own small pumpkin. Engaging with paint is very calming and relaxing for children and they especially love the opportunity to paint something as exciting and interesting as their own little pumpkin. Sometimes they will like the support of having a grown up draw the lines of a funny face for them that they can paint inside of, and sometimes not. It is important to offer young children choices as much as possible.
Offering young different materials to decorate their little pumpkins with is another way to invite engagement. Fun bits such as stickers, a glue stick, colored feathers, sequins, bits of coloured paper etc. can be loads of fun and inspire loads of fun ideas.
A smaller version of a folded newspaper hat can be lots of fun for little hands to put on their own little pumpkin and then take it off again. Young children naturally and joyfully pick up new vocabulary and its meaning in the context of play.
A large cardboard pumpkin face made with shapes of different sizes can inspire some spontaneous teaching as well. Cut out two triangles for the eyes, a small semi-circle for the nose, and a larger one for the mouth.
This can be a lot of fun to paint with the children as a group painting project. It is also a great way to teach the names of shapes and the names of different objects and introduce them to the concepts of ‘too big’, ‘doesn’t fit’, ‘it fits just right’ while offering them different sized objects to toss through the holes.
Through some trial and error young children are able to deduce that some shapes and sizes will fit through some but not others. That round objects will roll but not others. It is important to give young children enough time for them to deeply engage in play and work out these things on their own while being there in a supportive and responsive way.