P for Pumpkin

We started our P is for Pumpkin lessons last week, on Friday to be exact, and we didn't finish them until yesterday. I'm getting way behind on our preschool and may have to cram G, F, M, and W all in to one week. We did start G (ghosts) yesterday after we finished off pumpkin. But today I convinced Reid he needed to nap so that he could stay up late and go on a date with me this evening (to buy the last of our pirate party supplies). I hope I can convince him to nap tomorrow as well, so he can stay up late for our Church Halloween party. Take a nap and stay up late (8:00) or no nap and go to bed with Nell (7:00) is the new rule around here. As a side note, can I just tell you how blissful it was to have three napping kiddos today (it's the day we watch a friend's baby) for a total of 90 minutes? The sound of a quiet house was pure joy! Anyway, here is a quick look at how we explored pumpkins and the letter Pp. 

For pumpkins our focus was on the life cycle (something introduced during our apple lessons). We made a life cycle craft:

cut and "carved" some pumpkins:

and are trying out a life cycle science experiment:

Reid has a clear understanding that fruits and veggies start with seeds, grow into seedlings, become full sized plants, blossom flowers, and then give us food; but I want to make sure he understands the process is a circle, not a line. So we cut a little pumpkin open, left the seeds inside, and added soil and water. Hopefully we have a seedling in the next couple weeks. When we did our pumpkin carving he was astonished by the number of seeds found in the inside. He just kept asking Nell, "can you believe there are so many seeds?" So I think he does grasp the circular motion of plant life cycle. 

As for the letter Pp, we filled a dot sheet with pennies:

 glued packaging peanuts onto a capital P block letter:

he loved the tactile aspect of this activity

and we did our lowercase-p puzzle activity: 

This time I got smart and instead of simply tracing the letter I also outlined the puzzle pieces.

And in case you missed the beauty of that top photo:

this is absolutely the reason I love doing preschool with this little guy. Sure, the learning is great, but the mommy and Reid special time is the real motivation.