One thing I have learned over the years is that no matter the child, drawing on a relevant, engaging topic that brings excitement benefits our learning environment. Depending on the time of year, it can be life cycles, animals, insects, or even pumpkins. The fall is so fun and is a great time to bring in extra pumpkin activities, bat activities, and spider activities. Let’s dig into some pumpkin literacy activities and how I would integrate pumpkins into our curriculum.
One simple way to work in non-fiction text features is to use your favorite non-fiction pumpkin books. Some of my favorites are:
As you read and examine the nonfiction features, you can create an anchor chart together! Here is an example of what mine looked like! After creating your anchor chart, you can have students dig through books and use sticky notes to mark pages that had text features we were searching for.
You can also easily discuss making connections! There are many wonderful fiction read aloud books about pumpkins. You can even bring in a pumpkin to carve and then discuss text-to-self connections after reading a book.
In kindergarten, doing A LOT of text-to-self work before you extended it to text-to-text or text-to-world is necessary. It also is the easiest connection for them. They were always able to find a “Me too!” moment! Take some time to write about the connection and bring some writing in, too!
You can also have students practice reviewing story elements like character, setting, problem, and solution.
I love, love, love shared reading! It’s one of my favorite parts of the day. It so easy to squeeze in extra practice on literacy skills and the kids always have a blast singing or reading the poem we have for the week. With the pumpkin shared reading, we did sight word work and used a yellow crayon to circle all of the sight words in the poem. These poems then go into our Song and Poem Books (folders with brads) and the students read them over and over during read to self time. They just love them!
One reason I love flip up books is that they make integrating literacy, science, and math so easy. (Read more about why I love them HERE!). You can have students work on these books in large group, small groups, or independently. There are so many ways to use flip up book in the primary classroom.
You can grab the pumpkin one FREE!
Are you looking for some pumpkin literacy activities that integrate well with literacy in your classroom?
Grab the Pumpkin Fun Literacy Unit. It includes:
When you pick up the Pumpkin Fun Literacy Unit, all you have to do is add your favorite read alouds and you’ll be set for some fall fun! Get it today to have fun while learning.
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One Response
Hi! My name is Fae Dalyell and I live in Belle Isle,FL. I have read your blog post about Integrating Pumpkins and a FREEBIE and I want to say that I am quite impressed with your professionalism on the subject!