This week’s activities

Exploring a pumpkin

At this time of year, many children will have some experience of pumpkins, whether it be from visiting a farm to pick them, buying them from a shop or carving them ready for Halloween. We decided that we would look at a pumpkin in more detail. First of all the children looked closely at the pumpkin, noticing its shape, colour and texture. They then considered what could be inside; “seeds”, said one child. After the teacher cut off the top they looked inside and noticed lots of seeds, surrounded by gooey pulp. One of the children commented that they look like “nuts”. The children then used safety knives to cut out the pulp and seeds, using their hands once they had loosened the pulp. They decided that the inside of the pumpkin felt slimy, wet and “horrible”, noticing that the inside felt very different to the outside.

Once they had explored the pumpkin, they decided they would like to create their own pumpkin pictures. As we didn’t have any orange paint, they thought about how they could make some by mixing red and yellow together. They used the lid from the pumpkin dipped into the paint to make the shape of the pumpkin and then used triangles to make eyes and circles to make a mouth.

Once they had finished their paintings, they discussed what we could do with the seeds that they had removed from the pumpkin. The children decided that they could plant them to see if they would grow into new pumpkins next year. Fingers crossed! The remainder of the seeds were dried and put out for the birds who visit our garden.

Autumn/Halloween

Lots of the children have been talking about Halloween and what it means to them. Many of the children related it to creepy-crawlies. As they had shown an interest, we created our own tuff tray full of creepy-crawlies, leaves, twigs and natural items. The addition of masking tape in a web pattern added to the fun. The children used magnifying glasses to find the spiders/insects hidden amongst the leaves, they helped pick them out using tweezers, avoiding the sticky spiders web and used magnets to find the hidden letters scattered amongst the natural objects. They explored the natural resources and discussed why the leaves were changing colour and texture and how insects make their homes in places like such as this as it gives them shelter, food and protection.

There are photos of the activities on our Facebook page.

We hope you have a lovely, safe (and fingers crossed, dry!) weekend.

The Pre-school Team