Pumpkin Head

When we dropped Eli off at school on Wednesday there was a "Pumpkin Head" on the table with which the children could play.  A "Pumpkin Head" is this:

But it's a pumpkin instead of a potato.  Genius, huh?

I also found this picture during my "Mr. Potato Head" Google Image search.  It simply must be included here.

Darth Tater.  Genius again.

Ok, back to Pumpkin Head.  Eli's very creative teachers had drilled holes, using a screwdriver, in a pumpkin and had the Mr. Potato Head pieces out for play.  What a fantastic idea!  We had to do it too.

Abby and I picked up some "Funkins" on sale at Joann's.  Eli's teachers had used real pumpkins, but I liked the idea of being able to save ours until next year.  I am not sure I made the right choice...more on that later.  Using our Mr. Potato Head as I guide, I started poking holes.

I did not put a hole on top of the pumpkin, as the hats sat nicely right on top of the stem.  Getting holes into the pumpkin proved to be a harder task then I had originally thought.  I would have been better off to use a real drill.  Also, this produced some dusty stuff, as you can see on the cookie sheet.  I guess a "Funkin" has it's own kind of pumpkin guts.

My Pumpkin Head injury.  I had to push hard to get those holes in. 

I do think the pain was worth it, however, to see all of these happy faces...on Children Heads and Pumpkin Heads alike.

My picture of the final products.  Sorry Green Hat Pumpkin Guy...your other pink ear seems to be missing in action.

And...Abby wanted to take a picture of the final products too.  I think her picture is much more artistic than mine.  She must have her Daddy's photography genes.

My thoughts on using a real pumpkin versus the fake pumpkin:  My first inclination toward the fake pumpkins had been my desire to keep them until next year and I didn't want to get pumpkin guts on our Mr. Potato Head pieces.  BUT, the fake pumpkins have been leaving behind some dust, fake pumpkin guts, if you will.  There is dusty stuff on our Mr. Potato Head pieces and I will have to wash them anyways.  That said, I think I would rather have done this with real pumpkins. 

What great fun!  

Thanks to Eli's wonderful teachers for another fantastic idea in their LONG, LONG line of fantastic ideas.  We are so thankful for amazing teachers in the life of our son.

P Pumpkin Painting

On Monday, a firetruck and some firemen came to visit Eli's preschool.  While this type of event would bring joy to the hearts of most little boys, Eli is not fond of firetruck and firemen for undetermined reasons.  I think it has something to do with the mask, which does cause complications as we near October 31st.  Anyways, to avoid Eli having to seek therapy 20 years from now because his parents forced him to go to school on the firetruck day, we kept him home.  Upon learning that he was going to stay home, Eli told me, "Since I am not going to school, we should do some homeschool."  You got it, buddy.  Since "P" was the letter of the day at school, it became our letter of the day at home.

I had some leftover canned pumpkin in the fridge and my vision was to use that pumpkin to "paint" the letter P. 

We started by putting the "P" printout on a cookie sheet and then covered it with plastic wrap.  Abby is pretty curious at this point.

We got out the pumpkin and started making some observations...

Smelling

Touching

Listening

And tasting.  That would be the appropriate face after tasting pumpkin.  It's amazing what some sugar and spices can do to that stuff.

When the observations were complete, we started our "painting."

I had envisioned that we would paint on the pumpkin in the shape of the P.  It was hard to get it to spread, even with the plastic wrap.  We decided to take the plastic wrap off to see if it would work better.

No plastic wrap covering and still kind of a rough go for spreading.  We did eventually use our hands a bit, but just for a bit.  Neither of my kids like to have messy stuff on their hands.  Weird.  I imagine that if they were into being messy, this would have been loads more fun.  However, the 30 seconds of using their hands did seem to be super fun for them....just a fast super fun.

Our end products.  Not quite what I had pictured, but fun nonetheless.  Abby's was more the idea of what I was going for...painting INSIDE the P outline...but she did have a bit of help from me.

Our conclusion:  

Pumpkin probably works better in baked goods than for painting, but I still think we would do this again. 

Pumpkin Math (Loosely)

I am a bit behind on blogging.  A COUPLE WEEKS AGO, on the way home from school, Eli said to me, "Can we work on my math today?"  Music to my ears.  Seriously.  Here's what we came up with:

I decided to have the kids investigate the different ways that we can combine numbers to make a total of 6.  I had both of these papers set up at the table, exactly like you see above, and invited the kids to explore.

We started, of course, by eating the candy pumpkin.  The six candy corns were used as the counters for the activity.  I had a bag of candy corn and pumpkins in the pantry that had been purchased to top some cupcakes.  We opened the bag a bit early.

For Eli's paper, he would count out the candy corn needed for the sum.  So, he would put 2 candy corns under the 2 (in the 2 + 4) and then 4 candy corns under the 4.  We could then count the total and find that 2 + 4 was indeed 6.  We worked our way around the paper, marveling at the many ways you could get a total of 6.  It's true;  we marveled.

On Abby's paper, there were boxes drawn in which she would place the candy corns.  With her, this was more of an exercise of practicing one-to-one correspondence:  one candy corn goes in one square.  Many times, she would try to put two candy corns in one square.  As with Eli, we would count the total number of candy corns once they were in the squares to find a total of 6. Again, for Abby, it was great practice of counting with one-to-one correspondence as she does like to count the same candy twice.  2 + 4 is definitely not 7.

Counting and adding away.

Some fun extensions:

• Investigate what happens when you do 2 + 4 and 4 + 2.  Does the same thing happen for 5 + 1 and 1 + 5?  YAY!!  You just taught your kid the Commutative Property of Addition.
• How about some Algebra?  I have 2 candy corns...how many more do I need to make 6?  Essentially, you just solved the equation 2 + x = 6 and found that x = 4.
• And now the fun part...SUBTRACTION.  Once all of the addition has been completed, start eating!  I have 6 candy corns and I just ate one.  How many are left?
• Here's a tricky one:  I have three candy corns left.  Can I eat 6 of them?  NO WAY.  3 - 6 and 6 - 3 are not the same thing.  You just taught your kid that subtraction is NOT commutative.

I titled this "Pumpkin Math (Loosely)" because that is what it is.  The pumpkin in the center of the paper is meaningless, it could just as easily be an apple or a Thanksgiving turkey or a Christmas tree or completely blank.  You could also investigate ANY number.  I chose 6 simply because it seemed like a good amount of candy to eat...enough to feel like you were eating a decent treat, but not enough to make kids crazy.   All that to say, the pumpkin was festive for fall and we got to eat 6 pieces of candy.  Ok, really, we got to eat 6 + 1 pieces of candy, including the pumpkin.

Doing math while eating candy with my sweet kids...that was a fun day.