Explore language boosting/culturally diverse activities at our upcoming workshop on language acquisition, understanding linguistics, and cultural diversity on Wednesday, 10/19 from 6:30pm-8:30pm! Fee: $25 Member, $30 Non-Member. Register online here or call 301-290-0040! In the meantime, check out these language building activities featuring the Five Little Pumpkins poem!
The poem Five Little Pumpkins has an array of language learning activities that can go along with it! But first, here are the lyrics for the poem:
Five little pumpkins sitting on a gate,
The 1st one said, “Oh my, it’s getting late.”
The 2nd one said, “There are witches in the air.”
The 3rd one said, “But we don’t care.”
The 4th one said, “Let’s run and run and run.”
The 5th one said, “I’m ready for some fun.”
Whewwwww went the wind & out went the lights,
And the five little pumpkins rolled out of sight.
Activity 1. Make a Mini-Book
There is a free printable mini book for Five Little Pumpkins here. They have two versions: color and black and white (which children can color themselves!). This is a great tool to get children involved with the poem. Ask them about the appearance of each pumpkin, have them count them, sort them in size, name them, and even give them a background or different culture! Reading and re-reading the words on the page will help children with word recognition.
Activity 2. Make a Visual
At Preschool Printables you will find some printable graphics (a gate and five pumpkins). They come in color or black and white. There are several different things you can do with these.
- Print on paper/card stock and laminate so they can be used over and over
- Print on felt to be used on a felt board
- Print several copies on paper so each child can have their own set to manipulate
- Use them with just one child, or with a group of children to work on counting, vocabulary (pumpkins, witches, numbers one through five, big/small, first/last, colors) following directions, answering “wh” questions, answering yes/no questions, etc.
Activity 3. Make Finger Puppets
Another fun activity is to make finger puppets to act out the story. There are a few different ways to do this. First, this is an ADORABLE craft by Craft Jr. dot com. They have several different Halloween finger puppets here…as well as other fun crafts. You can make 5 of them for the Five Little Pumpkins story!
Activity 4. Get Hands On
Get yourself five REAL pumpkins (of the small variety) and put them on your “gate” (real or fake). You can draw or paint faces on them, carve them, etc. Get pumpkins in different colors and sizes, and you can talk about the colors, the size (big/medium/small, biggest vs smallest, have the child put them in order from biggest to smallest) to review diversity. When you draw faces on, you can talk about shapes (i.e. triangles for eyes, circle for nose, crescent for mouth, rectangle for teeth, etc) Emphasize that each pumpkin is different on the outside but they are all the same on the inside!
There you have it! Four fun activities to go along with Five Little Pumpkins. Remember, while doing these activities with your child or student, be sure to use a variety of vocabulary when discussint the following:
- Talk about each step when making a mini book, or doing a craft (i.e. “First we are going to cut out the pages, then we are going to staple them together…”).
- Talk about attributes: colors, sizes, quantity…compare and contrast them (i.e. “This pumpkin is the BIGGEST”)
- Ask simple “wh” questions while you are doing the activities (i.e. How many? Which one is bigger? Which pumpkin is your favorite? What color is a pumpkin? What shape is the moon? What shape are that pumpkin’s eyes?)
- When you are done, review what you JUST did! See if your child can recall some of the steps.
Don’t forget to register for “Understanding Linguistic and Cultural Diversity and Language Acquisition” on Wednesday, 10/19 from 6:30pm-8:30pm! Fee: $25 Member, $30 Non-Member. Register online here or call 301-290-0040.
