1-2-3 Come Do A Few Pumpkin Craftivities With Me

Now that October is nearing an end and your students have hopefully read a zillion fall books, or you've read them during story time, have children choose their favorite fall book and do one or more of the craftivities in this Common Core Pumpkin packet, which covers a lot of reading and writing standards.  Woo Hoo!

The packet includes:

A pumpkin book report craftivity. 

"Read it" is a play on words for "Ribbit" so I've also included a little frog template that you can run off. 

Students color, trim and glue the frog to their pumpkin.  There's also a blank pumpkin template without the words "Read it"  

Students can leave the pumpkin plain, or draw on a face to make a Jack-O-Lantern, especially if they're writing about a Halloween book.

Run off the "pumpkin guts" writing prompt section on yellow paper. Students  fill in with information about their favorite book.

Add some finishing touches with crayons and a school photo glued to the stem.

The packet also includes another writing activity without a craft.

Older  students write about two of their favorite fall books on the recording sheet.

If you want them to compare and constrast the books they've chosen, they can fill out the Venn diagram to help organize their thoughts.

Are you working on retelling a story with your kiddos? The beginning-middle-end story pumpkin craftivity, will be a fun way for them to share their thoughts.

As with the other craft, I've also included a blank pumpkin pattern, so students can draw on their own face.  Run off the template of your choice on orange construction paper. 

Students place the orange pumpkin paper on the top of a yellow sheet of construction paper and cut once, creating the inside of their page at the same time that they cut out their pumpkin cover.

Children glue or staple their booklet together. (I've provided a nice wide tab on the left side.)  Cutting on the dashed lines of the orange paper, students create a flip booklet to explain the beginning, middle and end of their story.

I've included samples of both projects, so you can quickly and easily make your own examples to share with your students. 

For my book report pumpkin,  I chose the story Big Pumpkin, by Erica Silverman. 

For the retelling-a-story pumpkin, I chose The Little Old Lady Who Wasn't Afraid Of Anything, by Linda Williams.  These are two of my all-time favorite Halloween books.  They've always been favorites for my Y5's as well. 

Any of the activities work well for your Daily 5, and are especially fun for Halloween party day.  Let's face it, most children are so energized that day, that it's nice to have something a bit out of the ordinary, to grab their attention and keep them focused, while still learning something relevant.

Completed projects make wonderful bulletin boards or hallway displays. The pumpkin book report looks cute hung back-to-back suspended from the ceiling.

A nice bonus about the pumpkin craftivities without Jack-O-Lantern faces, is that you can keep these displays up through Thanksgiving, with the rest of your November harvest things.

Click on the link to view/download the Common Core Pumpkin Reading Craftivities.

Thanks for visiting today. I'm dashing off to do some serious grocery shopping. 

You know you're low on things when you're out of condiments like ketchup and mayo, to say nothing of the rest that I need to make dinner for tonight. Wishing you a productive day.

"The injury we do and the one we suffer are not weighed in the same scale." -- Aesop