Thursday, October 22, 2009

Pumpkin Unit

Last week we did a unit on pumpkins in honor of the fall season being in full swing. Clayton had a pretty good week attention wise, but it was during this unit that he started answering all my questions with "Brian." What color is the pumpkin? Brian. Where's the stem? Brian. Which book do you want to read? Brian. Yeah. It was like that. And he's still doing it this week . . .

On the bookshelf:
Pumpkin Jack
The Pumpkin Runner
Is it a Fruit? Is it a Vegetable? It's a Pumpkin!

IPOD Playlist:
What Falls in the Fall? by Laurie Berkner

Online Resources:


We started the week with identifying the parts of the pumpkin. I have a decorative pumpkin that we used as a guide to make our pumpkin for Clayton's notebook. Lovely, isn't it?? =)


We read Pumpkin Jack several times over the course of the week. I used flashcards I made (ABCTeach.com) to help illustrate the life cycle of a pumpkin (I just forgot to take a pic of them). Of course, Clayton's favorite part was the end: PUMPKIN PIE!


Practice recognizing patterns:

On Thursday we talked about size and relative size. I had three pumpkins: small, medium, and large. We weighed them and also used yarn to measure their circumference. You can tell when Clayton helped me write:



Introducing graphing concepts:



On Friday, we went to the pumpkin patch with a homeschool group. It was more than just a pumpkin patch, with lots of learning activities for the kids.


And on Sunday afternoon, a new friend of Clayton's invited us down the street to carve pumpkins. (She is a 16 year old girl who goes to the same clinic as Clayton for therapy--we never realized her dad lived down the street from us. Clayton loves her because she has a chair. The whole time we were there, he could have cared less about the carving--he just wanted to touch her chair!!). Clayton's sensory issues were in full swing (the pumpkin insides made him gag A LOT), so Brian ended up doing the carving for him.
The carving is the pumpkin sneaking a peek out of the blinds. Looks pretty cool, huh?


5 comments:

Anonymous said...

VERY impressed with Brian's pumpkin!!

Katy said...

Wow, what a great week of lessons! I'm such a school dork--I just love this stuff.

Charlie found the inside of the pumpkin disgusting, but I do too, so we let maw maw do the scooping.

Wherever HE Leads We'll Go said...

Sounds like a really good week. I like that picture of Clayton peeking through the pumpkin. Brian's pumpkin is very cool!

Christina Padilla said...

Ash!!!!!!!!!!!!! OMG!! You have a new baby! and Clayton is so big! I can't believe it!

it's been way too long since I last "saw" you online since I left the Blue Crew years ago.

miss you and the wonderful time we spent at scrap etc!!!!

lets keep in touch.
happy halloween and take care of those beautiful boys!

xoxo
cp

Yankee said...

Love all the pumpkins.