So to celebrate October, I checked out a bunch of pumpkin books from the library, and we’re reading through them –one a day.
On Sunday night, we read How Many Seeds in a Pumpkin? by Margaret McNamara. In this story, Charlie’s teacher Mr. Tiffin has his first grade class guess how many seeds will be inside three pumpkins: one small, one medium-sized, and one large.
On Monday morning, before cutting our two pumpkins, we named them Charlie and Sally, and we measured their circumference and height and counted the ribs on the side of each pumpkin. How Many Seeds in a Pumpkin? told us that more ribs means more seeds. We each tried to draw one of the pumpkins. Then we opened up our little pumpkins, scooped out all the seeds, and cooked the pumpkin in the oven. We used the cooked pumpkin to make two pumpkin pies —which disappeared before I could get a picture of them. Also on Monday, we read Pumpkin Town by Katie McKy, and all of us, even twelve year old Karate Kid, enjoyed the story of a pumpkin vine gone wild that takes over the town.
On Tuesday, Z-baby (age 8) and I read half of the easy reader Oh My Pumpkin Pie by Charles Ghigna. It’s OK for an easy read, but the problem with the easy readers for Z-Baby is that they’re much too silly and immature for her to enjoy them or become absorbed in them. She’s listening to Anne of Green Gables and Ballet Shoes. But her reading level is on par with Oh My Pumpkin Pie, a cute book but not terribly interesting for an intelligent eight year old. I haven’t figured out what to do about this issue.
On Wednesday, we finished reading Oh My Pumpkin Pie, and I read Pumpkin Soup by Helen Cooper to Karate Kid and Z-baby. The illustrations in this particular book are beautiful. I suggested that the urchins try copying one of the illustrations, but Karate Kid said that he couldn’t. Z-Baby, however, made an attempt. I asked the kids if they’d rather make pumpkin soup or pumpkin butter. Of course they went for the sweet stuff. We used this recipe for the pumpkin butter.
We also roasted the pumpkin seeds. It was easy. I washed the seeds, poured melted butter over them, and salted them with seasoned salt. Then I put them in the oven at a low temperature, about 200 degrees, for about 0 to 30 minutes. The urchins all tried the seeds, but the only one who really liked them was Karate Kid.
Today we’ll read another pumpkin book, but we’ve run out of pumpkin from our two pumpkins to cook. I’ll either need to buy more pumpkins or buy some canned pumpkin if we’re to have more cooking adventures.
We love roasted pumpkin seeds around here. My daughter takes them to all her soccer games for the team to eat instead of sunflower seeds. We also love pumpkin bread, muffins, pumpkin pancakes with cinnamon butter, stewed pumpkin, and pumpkin casserole with pralined pecans on top!
This post inspires me to do something pumpkin-related. Unfortunately my greatest pumpkin weakness is those little candy corn pumpkins that are everywhere this time of year. Thanks for giving me some more virtuous ideas!
A favorite book around here is ‘Pumpkin Time.’ The girls are a little old for it now, but they still enjoy it.
What fun! Thanks for all the pumpkin-y ideas and book suggestions, Sherry. We’re supposed to go to the pumpkin patch tomorrow, weather permitting, so maybe we’ll buy a few pumpkins and have our own pumpkin week next week.
As for the reading “problem” with Z-baby, I can definitely see how it would be problematic, but I can’t think of a solution, other than patience. 🙂
Thanks for participating!
Oh How I love Fall. There are so many great ideas for fall crafts and pumpkins are something we enjoy including in them.
Thanks for the wonderful pumpkin inspirations. Regarding reading for babyz. I would recommend having her read aloud with the higher level interest books on tape, to assist with increasing fluency. Also a couple books that my daughter enjoyed at that age were the Magic Tree house sereies and Boxcar Children. If you haven’t yet tried them–you seem quite knowledgeablebut thought I would mention it.