Simple Pumpkin Activities for Toddlers and Preschoolers
We have been having so much fun with all things pumpkins over the course of the past couple weeks! I’m excited to share some of the fun we’ve been having here in this post. You’ll find 12 different hands-on, play-based learning activities from sensory play, to journal activities, to fine motor skill building, and more. Be sure to pin what you like along the way!
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We started an active learning journal after being inspired by my friend Theresa. You can read more about these journals and the idea behind them here on her blog. They are a great way to personalize your child’s learning and create activities specific to their interests and needs. We love using our active learning journal (we like the 9x12 size!) for themed activities especially. You can find some of our themed journal activity posts here:
Apples - Dinosaurs - Ocean - Zoo - Ice Cream - Watermelon - Camping - Name Activities
I have been working on color words with Kade (4.5) as an intro to sight words this school year and this week we focused on the word “orange.” To reinforce recognition, I had him find all the pumpkins that read “orange” in his journal and dot them with an orange do-a-dot marker. We had worked on the word “red” the week prior and did the same activity with the word “red” on apples. Before he went to town dotting, we spelled the word out loud together to reinforce what he was looking for.
For this activity, we used our spiral-bound, wipe-clean, numbers and shapes activity book! Kade loves when I hide things for him, so I hid some mini pumpkin erasers in a small bin of kinetic sand, and provided some fine motor tweezers for squeezing and transferring. Kade had to dig through the sand, find the mini erasers, and then lay them out on the counting mat until each circle had the correct number of pumpkins inside.
After awhile of digging, pinching, tweezing, and transferring with the tweezers, I let Kade dig through with his hands because there are benefits to that as well! This was a great (and fun) way for him to practice one-to-one correspondence/counting one object at a time, while also engaging in some good quality sensory play and building fine motor skills!
I always love to include some pre-writing activities in our themed journal pages. Pencil grip, fine motor skills, and writing are all related areas that we tend to spend extra time in mainly because it’s where Kade needs the most extra support right now. To go along with the pumpkin theme, we worked a bit on the letter “P” and how to write it. Those curvy lines can be tricky sometimes, so we worked on drawing lines “around the pumpkin.” I had drawn the straight line for him already, and provided him with a dot to start at, a dot to finish at, and a pumpkin sticker to curve around.
I like to let him use something other than a pencil when we work in our active learning journal so that he is experiencing different utensils, however, the one downfall is that then there is no eraser for mistakes. :) We are working on accepting that it’s okay to make mistakes and that we are only learning. For this pre-writing activity, we used our beloved gel crayons- these are so fun! They are also great to write with for little fingers because they are a bit thicker than a regular pencil which is sometimes easier to grasp.
I realize that some people love the idea of having activities in a journal, but aren’t interested in, or able to take the time to create the activities. This is part of the reason I created our spiral-bound, wipe-clean activity books! I mentioned the numbers and shapes book earlier, but this one is our fall-themed activity book (I told you- we love themed activities)!
For this activity, Kade was working on the letter “P” again. This time, instead of working on writing the letter, he was simply working on recognizing it . When creating this page, I tried to include letters that look similar to the letter “P” so that you really have to pay close attention to the letters you’re covering. The directions say to “find and cover” all the P’s and you can get creative with what you use to cover them. Here, we used little mini vase filler pumpkins but you could use mini erasers, dried beans that look like pumpkin seeds (or actual pumpkin seeds), pom poms, colored bingo chips, or something fun and festive like candy corn or candy pumpkins!
Hole punching! Have you ever thought to let your toddler/preschooler attempt a hole punch? It is SUCH an effective way to build fine motor skills and also let them feel awesome using a “grown-up” tool. ;) For this pumpkins on a vine hole punching activity, I cut some orange construction paper into strips and then used a black sharpie and our gel crayons to draw some mini pumpkins on a vine. I had him use our hole punch to punch a hole in each pumpkin.
This activity was easy to create and was so fun for him! I’m always trying to come up with new ways to build those fine motor muscles knowing it will help with pencil grip in the long run- this is a great way to do that.
We LOVE a festive play doh tray! If you don’t have one of these round, sectioned serving trays, you need one! They are perfect for throwing together a quick and festive invitation to play. We have done several of these play doh trays and you can see many of them shared in this post.
For this play doh tray, we used our fresh batch of homemade pumpkin spice play doh (which we made using this recipe). I included magnetic letters in uppercase and lowercase letters that spelled out the word “orange” and had Kade build the word twice in his play doh after we worked on this printable by Crystal McGinnis. I also included some mini pumpkin erasers, mini pumpkin and leaves vase filler, dried black beans, some cut-up green pipe cleaners, googly eyes, silicone cupcake liners, and a pumpkin-shaped cookie cutter.
After Kade worked on spelling out the word “pumpkin,” he built the cutest pumpkin I’ve ever seen! I mean just look at it.
This one is simple as simple can be, folks. But it’s meaningful and it’s effective! We filled a small bin with all of our orange and green pom poms to give it a pumpkin-look and set a metal pumpkin bucket (always check the Target dollar section for fun, festive, metal buckets) in the bin with some fine motor tweezers.
The idea of this simple sensory bin was just to use the tweezers to grab the “pumpkins” aka the pom poms, and transfer them into the bucket. Squeezing and releasing those little tweezers are great ways to build fine motor skills and develop hand-eye coordination.
I set up this activity for Tatum (2) to do while Kade worked in his journal one day. I put some little decorative pumpkins in a basket with a play kitchen spoon from this Melissa & Doug play kitchen utensil set. I used a piece of green construction paper, a black sharpie, and our tempera paint sticks to draw some pumpkins on a vine, and then used our colored painters’ tape to add numbers 1-10 next to each pumpkin.
The idea here was for Tatum to use the spoon to transfer each pumpkin from the basket to the vine on the paper. I don’t expect her to recognize all of her numbers yet but the numbers are more there for exposure at this point. She loves helping to “count” things so we then counted all the pumpkins together once she had one in each spot. This activity works on gross motor skills such as balancing, and hand-eye coordination, while also exposing to early numeracy skills.
Apparently we were all about pumpkins on a vine because here’s another! This was one I drew up in our active learning journal to work on beginning letter sounds. I just used our Mr. Sketch markers to draw this activity up and had Kade dot each letter with an orange do-a-dot marker. As he put a dot on each letter/pumpkin, he had to say the sound that each letter makes. This was a great way to reinforce some letter sounds that he already knows, while also practicing some that we are still working on.
Here is another example of an activity from our fall-themed activity book! Tatum used this page for a few minutes until her attention span gave out, and then Kade finished it off for her- many of the activities in our books can be modified and adjusted for different age levels!
For this activity, we chose to use colored pom poms to cover the pumpkin shapes according to the code at the bottom of the page. Kiddos here are working on naming shapes, shape recognition, color identification, color matching, hand-eye coordination, and hey- throw in some fine motor tweezers and you’ve got yourself a fine motor activity! You can also use colored bingo chips, m&ms, snap cubes, or colored buttons/beads to cover the pumpkins.
Have you read this book? It’s such a cute one for a preschool-aged pumpkin play theme and a great way to incorporate some color mixing water play! Water is one of our go-to, simple sensory bins that never fails to be a hit. We of course love playing with water during the summer outside, but it’s a nice way to switch things up indoors, too, when it’s too chilly to be outside- I just use warm water!
To prep this activity, I laid out a towel (a must for indoor water play), got out one of our medium-sized plastic storage bins, and used our silicone cupcake liners to set out some pumpkin soup “ingredients.” We used pom poms, mini erasers, and mini pumpkin vase filler. I set out two big mixing spoons and two plastic scoops, along with a couple of plastic bowls. I filled the tub about a quarter full and we used yellow and red food coloring to mix our soup and watch it turn orange!
The kids played with this for a long time and had fun dumping and mixing all the ingredients, and dishing into the bowls to make and serve “soup.”
Here are a few of our other favorite pumpkin-themed books for you to check out:
It’s Pumpkin Day, Mouse!
The Runaway Pumpkin
How Big Could Your Pumpkin Grow?
Pumpkin, Pumpkin
Pete the Cat: Five Little Pumpkins
And in case you missed it in the post, here is the link once more to our fall-themed activity book! Once all of our spiral-bound books are sold out, you can still always purchase the activity book as a downloadable PDF, and you can also check out our Numbers & Shapes activity book here. Check back soon for our Winter-Themed book!
Like this post and want to see some more FALL FUN?! You may also like these posts:
Learning Sight Words with Fall Leaves
Fall Sensory Play for Toddlers & Preschoolers
Apple-Themed Journal Activities for Preschoolers
Pumpkin Paint & Wash Activity for Toddlers
”5 Little Pumpkins” Balancing & Counting Activity for Toddlers
Apple Activities for Toddlers & Preschoolers
