Fun and Engaging Pumpkin Activities for Kindergarten

October is an exciting time in kindergarten! With Halloween and Trick-or-Treat looming, it can be a challenge to keep students engaged in learning. One of my students' favorite October themes in Kindergarten was pumpkins! There are so many fun ways to incorporate pumpkin activities in your classroom that your students will sure to be engaged even during this exciting time.

There are SO many pumpkin resources for kindergarten out there, you'll want to be sure to choose just a few that best fit your classroom and time constraints. In this post, I'm sharing a few of our favorite activities.

5 Favorite Pumpkin Books for Kindergarten

There are a lot of great pumpkin books for kindergarten. These are 5 of my favorites. *All links are Amazon Affiliate links. You can also check Schoalstic Book Clubs for great deals on books!

Seed, Sprout, Pumpkin, Pie by Jill Esbaum – This nonfiction book is a great way to teach students about pumpkins. This book covers life cycle, how pumpkins grow, and all the ways we use pumpkins. It has great photos to keep learners engaged.
From Seed to Pumpkin by Wendy Pfeffer – This nonfiction book is full of great information for teaching the pumpkin life cycle and how we use pumpkins. It has kid-friendly explanations and diagrams that are perfect for introducing nonfiction text elements to your kindergarten students.
It's Pumpkin Time by Zoe Hall – This book is a fun way to review how pumpkins grow. Two kids decide to grow their own pumpkin for Halloween. The book follows along as the pumpkin grows. The illustrations are beautiful.
The Biggest Pumpkin Ever by Steven Kroll and Jeni Basset – This fiction book is a fun story about 2 little mice who are working to grow the same pumpkin. It turns out they grow the biggest pumpkin ever. It's a fun story about working together.
Pumpkin Town by Kate McKy – This is another fiction story about a family of farmers who harvest pumpkins. The seeds accidentally blow in the wind and land on the town below their farm. Then chaos ensues as the pumpkins grow all over the town. This is a great story to use for making predictions and to practice sequencing. Best of all – kids love the silly story and imagining what will happen next!

Another great place to find nonfiction pumpkin books is on Scholastic Book Clubs. They seem to rotate different titles each year. It's a great place to find inexpensive nonfiction books.

Learning about Pumpkins

When we read our nonfiction books, we learned about the pumpkin life cycle. I used simple visuals and we practiced putting them in order using our science pocket chart. You could also create an anchor chart.

After you learn about the parts of a pumpkin, you can bring a real pumpkin to school to cut open and discover all the seeds and pulp inside. This hands-on learning opportunity is always a big hit!

We followed up the hands-on pumpkin experience with a parts of the pumpkin worksheet so students could take it home to share what they learned about pumpkins in science class.

Need some pumpkin worksheets including an option for Seesaw? Check out my All About Pumpkins Pack here in my TPT store.

Pumpkin Themed Activities

I'm not always a huge fan of themed centers because it can be a lot of work to prep new centers every month (or even every week). However, during certain times of the year, it is helpful to use a theme to keep your students engaged. You don't need to create or print out all-new centers! Keep it simple and add pumpkins to the centers you are already using.

Do you have a counting center or a math center? Add pumpkin mini-erasers.
Make your writing center pumpkin or Halloween themed. You can check out my picture writing prompts here.
Add orange play dough to your fine motor center.
Use BUMP as one of your center rotations? Make the board pumpkin themed. You can grab a FREE Pumpkin Bump Game here.
Add pumpkin or Halloween themed color by number practice to your morning work activities. Check out my Color by Number packs here.

These simple changes can make a big difference in engagement and you don't have to reinvent all your activities.

Pumpkin Family Projects

It's a fun time of year to incorporate a family project to give families an opportunity to work together.

Some years, we asked families to decorate a pumpkin to look like their favorite storybook character. Other years, we asked families to create a jack-o-lantern using basic shapes to accompany our geometry unit. We've even done paper jack-o-lanterns to hang in the hallway. You can check out my build-a-pumpkin pack here in my TPT store.

Looking for Halloween themed resources all in one place? Save yourself time and energy with the October Kindergarten Bundle. This bundle includes all the resources mentioned in this blog post as well as behavior puzzles and a bonus math BUMP game. Get yours here on TPT or here in my website shop.