Pumpkin Nature Study, Ideas and Activities - Exploring Nature with Children

Pumpkin Week – Exploring Nature with Children

We love following the Raising Little Shoots Exploring Nature with Children Curriculum. October sees Pumpkin Week and Floss our daughter has been incredibly excited as we have been gathering together different types of pumpkins to explore.

I love the range of sizes, textures and colours that these beautiful orbs come as; each totally different and unique. Our plan is to explore the pumpkins, use them as decorations in our home and then cook with them.

This post was originally published in 2019 and I’ve given it a little update for 2024. In October 2024 I’ve added a new pumpkin and squashes free download with lots of ideas on how to use this single resource.

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ENWC Pumpkin Week Child Led Learning

Exploring Nature with Children gives you a very flexible framework to work with that suits us well as we can dip in and still go with Floss’s interests at the time. She always loves learning new words and the names of things, counting, spotting letters, cooking, small world play and making things, so these are the activities I’ve focused on for this week on pumpkins.

Gathering Pumpkin Resources

Unlike some of the previous weeks so far I didn’t have hardly any resources already for this week. So, it was very much starting from the beginning. One thing I love to do is explore ideas on Pinterest to get me started, here’s the link to my Pumpkin Week Board.

One of the main activities we’ll be doing is visiting a pumpkin farm. I think it’s very important for children to understand where things come from, how they grow and are connected to the earth.

Montessori Pumpkin Resources

I’m a big fan of My Montessori Hub bundles and lots of the pumpkin resources came from their Autumn/ Fall Bundle I purchased in 2019. You can purchase them separately too. The two main sets I’ve chosen to use are Fiddlesticks.Kids and the Carrots and Oranges Set.

Both sets are quite large and I’ve only chosen to use a selection from each that I feel are suitable for Floss. I keep everything as I know that the following year we may be ready to explore further and use other resources. Floss’ interest in numbers and phonics has very much increased and so we will explore these areas through our pumpkin topic.

ENWC Pumpkin Activity Ideas and Printables

We’ve been exploring this curriculum for several years now ( 2024 – I think this is our 6th year…). Therefore, the activities here span from being around 2 years of age to 8 years of age +.

The cutting strips I’m going to be using as tracing lines for a simplified fine motor activity using chunky orange pens. We’ll be doing lots more cutting practise this year too.
Naming different types of pumpkins using three part cards. Floss can’t read yet (2019), but she sees three part cards as a problem solving puzzles. Her interest in words means she often has a good go at working out which word may be which by looking at sounds she knows such as initial letters. If your little one is interested in phonics you might like to check out my phonics series of blog posts here.
Naming different parts of the fruit. We’ll do this before we cook with the them so we can take a very good look inside the pumpkin. We’ll be using a microscope to take a closer look now Floss is older (2024 – age eight).
Matching upper and lower case letters. I’ll be picking out just the letters we’ve been looking at recently rather than all of them. For older children they could come up with Autumn words to match each letter of the alphabet.

Further Pumpkin Ideas and Activities

Floss has been enjoying drawing lines between things so the one labelling activity we’re going to have a go at together. I’ll read out the label and let her draw a line to where she thinks on the diagram. Older children could draw and label their own pumpkin.
Matching the number numeral to the number of objects. For older children you could detach the numerals off the bottom and using the pictures for addition and subtraction problems. You could print off extra copies and using them for multiplication problems too.
We’ll also be doing some nature journalling – if you’d like to find out more about journalling with your children check out my blog post here where we’re exploring minibeasts in our journals – it’s never too early to start, and a beautiful keepsake.

New Free Pumpkin & Squash Learning Download

Included with this download is a list of ways that you can use this resources to support phonics, English, maths including data handling and other learning objectives.

Pumpkin Handcrafts

We recently made the pumpkin lantern above using crayons and vellum. A lovely little activity that even really little ones can help with. Full instructions here.
A sun catcher is on our list of crafts to make – we’ll be following the instructions from this blog post.

Mini felt pumpkins – this craft is one for older children. I’m going to do it as a handcraft for me while Floss is getting on with her own craft. Here’s a lovely little tutorial.
I couldn’t not add this cute little pumpkin purse into the mix too. Again a craft more for slightly older children or with quite a bit of adult help.
We love using dough to make all sorts of things. We challenged Daddy to work out which were the real pumpkins of the ones we made below and which ones were the homemade!

If you’re looking for a family or setting collaborative project then this would be ideal and allow a range of ages to contribute at a level appropriate for them. Pumpkin wreath project.

We made a lovely little Autumn scene in 2019 with lots of homemade bits and bobs. Here’s the link to the blog post on how we made the different pieces. This year we’ll be getting these treasures back out and adding to our collection.

Creative Arts and Crafts Pumpkin Felt Ideas

If you’re looking for some gorgeous materials to make autumnal crafts with then I’d highly recommend Marie’s fabulous little Etsy shop.

We’ve ordered from her lots and always love the quality of the batts of felting fibre we get for needle felting and wet felting. You can find Marie’s Etsy shop here. These colours would make gorgeous pumpkins.

There’s a wide selection of pumpkin blanks that you can find here too.

Pumpkin Recipes for Fall

Floss has to be dairy free and gluten free so both of these recipes follow this diet. Here’s a pumpkin soup recipe that we’ll be trying and we do love a bit of chocolate in our house so can’t wait to have a go at making these chocolate pumpkin muffins.

How delicious does this pumpkin granary loaf look with homemade butter? Do check out the lovely Kelly’s website – The Way We Waldorf. You can find out how to make these but it’s also a website we get some many ideas and inspiration from.

Pumpkin Resources

Pumpkin Printables

Download “Pumpkin Maths” pumpkin-maths.pdf – Downloaded 421 times – 118.98 KB

Autumn Pumpkin Home Decorations

If you love the idea of having some hand made pumpkin creations in your home but don’t want to make them by hand right now then do check out some of the gorgeous makes on Etsy here.

Exploring Nature with Children Pumpkin Week Books

A new pumpkin book release in 2022 was Pomme and the Pumpkins. We love this sweet tale. You can find out a little bit more here in my Autumn books blog post.