5 Little Pumpkins – STEM, ELA, Crafts, Math, & More!

Do you remember the 5 Little Pumpkins Sitting on a Gate song or poem? I’m sharing the crafts, activities, STEM challenges, and more that we use for this beloved song with you today on the blog!

Who doesn’t love the 5 Little Pumpkins poem? We’ve been reciting this poem for years in my classroom. My students always love it. This year I heard that it was one of my students favorite songs so I had to create a resource just for him. You can grab one in my TPT store by clicking on the product cover above.

 

If you want to see a video where I explain all of this with more detail, go here:
The 5 Little Pumpkins – FREE Video Explanation

I start by introducing the word wall cards found in my resource on TPT. This is the perfect time to discuss ordinal numbers with your students. Although most students are familiar with them from lining up or winning a game, there is often still some confusion there.

I then read 2 different books, one was an old copy of the poem in a book and the other was a Pete the Cat version. Finally, I held up the poem that I printed out of the resource and we practiced saying it again while using hand motions. (I describe this more in the video posted above.)

We are working on retelling the major events of a story and this poem lends itself perfectly to that standard.

I showed them a colored sample of my expectations and then asked students to color their gate and cut and glue their pumpkins in the correct order with the correct speech bubbles.

I wasn’t picky about what colors they used as long as they were able to place them in the correct order with the correct speech bubbles.

They worked really hard on these!

They turned out so cute!

If you have some students who need a little extra support or take FOREVER to finish a project like this,  I have included some differentiated sheets with the speech bubbles or pumpkins already on the sheet.

The next day we revisited the poem. This time I brought out my retelling glove. The kids went wild for it! The pieces that you will need are included in the resource. I just hot-glued them to an old black glove I had laying around.

(See the video to learn more.)

I had the rest of the students sit down and handed out 5 masks. Those students stood up and we talked about the importance of being in the correct order. I was the narrator and each pumpkin recited their lines perfectly. Every child was able to have a chance to act out the poem and it only took a few minutes of our time.

Tomorrow the kids will get the black & white versions of these. We will color them and cut them out and then I will staple them to a sentence strip to make the cutest headbands!

For our STEM activity, I grabbed a bag of pumpkin candies at Walmart. (They were $1.98 at mine.) I paired the students and gave each group a planning sheet so they could design a fence to hold their pumpkins using clothespins and craft sticks.

Don’t you just love seeing the kindergarten kids attempt writing?!? I think this one says, “We are going to make our fence long.” I apologize for not getting more pictures.

I was so impressed with the fences they came up with! They are so much better than the one I had built as a practice!

This is the one I came up with….

Here are some pictures of the ones my students came up with….

I just love seeing their little brains at work!  They loved this activity and especially the end when they were able to eat the pumpkins. 🙂

We also completed a writing activity. Students had to predict what the pumpkins did after they rolled away.

I loved this one. He was doing his best and using his resources, such as the word wall cards on the board!

I spy a soon-to-be writer! This sweet child was writing “The pumpkins rolled to the pond.” Remember that this is the beginning of our kindergarten year so this excites me!

Tomorrow we will make our paper towel roll craft. I LOVE this and I know my students will too.

The students will use this to retell the story. I love that they can roll different parts of it down to describe the events. You can watch the video if it isn’t making sense to you!

I printed this color version as a sample but my students will color a black & white version to create theirs.

We’ve been completing the math printables for morning work. My students are really starting to build a strong understanding of the numbers 1-5.

You can click on any of these product thumbnails to grab a copy of your resource. So much fun! I love that I can pull this out every year. It has so many great things to keep your students engaged during that crazy week leading up to Halloween.

Happy Teaching & Mommy-ing this week!