From Seed to Pumpkin: A Thematic Unit 

The Spooky Pumpkin! 

Welcome to our Pumpkin Patch!

If you are thinking about what units to teach in the fall, consider teaching one on pumpkins! The students LOVE learning about pumpkins and there are so many fun and engaging activities and skills you can pull in to this unit. I've written a thematic unit on pumpkins that includes: reading, writing, poetry, math and science activities with craftivities, interactive notebooks, vocabulary cards and an October Home Project. 

Unit Cover Page

My favorite part about this thematic unit is our first grade Pumpkin Patch. Every year, our students think about a book to read at home and write a book report about it. Then, they decide which character from the story they want to dress up as on Halloween. They decorate a pumpkin to look like their character and bring it to school with their book report. We decorate our hallways to look like a pumpkin patch and line up the pumpkins in the hallway with their books. On Halloween the students dress up as their character and we do a character parade around the school. Even the teachers dress up too! It is so fun and it's a sneaky way for us to dress up for Halloween too!  In this unit, I've written directions, a parent letter and a book report for the students to complete at home.

Pumpkin Patch Templates and Directions

It is so fun to see how the students will decorate their pumpkins! This is usually my favorite part of October.

Also included in this unit are lesson plans...of course! I've written 15 days of lesson plans with mentor texts, materials, directions and examples.

Unit Lesson Plans

I've included vocabulary cards that show the life cycle of a pumpkin, parts of a pumpkin and the scientific method.

Life Cycle of a Pumpkin
These are excellent visuals for the students to have on display in the classroom for a future resource! I like to have a pocket chart next to my author's chair and I keep these cards there for my lesson and future reference.

A unit isn't complete unless we have craftivities! I LOVE to incorporate as much art and writing as I can in my units. Each craftivity comes with materials, directions and examples.
One craftivity is making a life cycle of a pumpkin and writing a procedural text to go with it.

Life Cycle of a Pumpkin

Another crafivitiy is making Spookley the Square Pumpkin out of a cube pattern and decorating him with tendrils and googly eyes. The students can retell the story of Spookley the Square Pumpkin. Isn't he cute?
It's hard to tell, but he is 3-D.... honest!

Spookley the Square Pumpkin

The next craftivity is for the students to write a spooky pumpkin story by brainstorming adjectives and story elements. Then, they can make their spooky pumpkin. I LOVE this one especially his crazy eyes and teeth!

The Spooky Pumpkin!

Also included in this unit are math, reading, poetry and science interactive notebooks.

Reading and Poetry Interactive Notebooks

Math Interactive Notebooks 

Science Interactive Notebook

There are also math workstation games, such as BUMP. I've written directions and have two different game mats that you can use: one in color and one in black and white. I laminate them so I can reuse them every year.  The students LOVE this game and want to play it all the time!

BUMP Game for Math Workstations

At the end of this unit, after you carve your Jack-O-Lantern, there is a Rotting Pumpkin Investigation. I know this probably sounds gross, but your students will LOVE it! All you need to do, is cut up pieces of your Jack-O-Lantern and place them in three different jars. One jar will have soil, the other one will have sand and the last one nothing, just air. The students will get to investigate to see which pumpkin in which jar will rot the fastest, the most, and the slowest. I've written an investigation log for your students to use. It includes a cover page, 8 days of investigating and a problem solving page at the end. Have fun with this one!

Our Rotting Pumpkin Investigation Log

I hope you got some great ideas about incorporating pumpkins into your science curriculum for October! It is so spooky and fun and the students just LOVE learning about them! If you are interested in checking out my thematic unit, click below.

From Seed to Pumpkin: A Thematic Unit 

Love, Kara

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