Pumpkin Fun: Book Crafts & Activities

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My bloggy pal Hilary over at Raising Fairies and Knights started a fun new Monthly Crafting Book Club this year - a challenge to create activities to go along with some of the most beloved children's books.

We've really had some great fun so far this year, just take a look:

January - Animal Action Dice Game for the book Barnyard Dance.
February - Cause & Effect Box for If You Give a Moose a Muffin.
March - an alphabetical scavenger hunt for Dr. Seuss's ABC.
April - handwashing fun to go along with The Piggy in the Puddle.
May - 5 Little Monkeys Fold 'Em Up for Five Little Monkeys Jumping on the Bed.
June - pinecone princess & Cozy Sweater Warrior Paper Dolls for The Princess and the Pony.
July - lantern craft for Curious George Goes Camping.
August - mini backpacks & dress-a-doll fun for Froggy Goes to School.

Now it's September, and our book is the adorable It's Pumpkin Day, Mouse!



I have to say, this month's book really inspired us.  We hadn't even finished our initial craft idea before we thought of new things to do.


So, not only do you get several fun pumpkin activities to go along with the Numeroff book, but you also get a bonus to go along with this:



Spookley has long been one of our favorite pumpkin books to read this time of year, so I couldn't let this post pass without doing something related to this title.

Of course, I had to completely contain myself - because there are a ton of things you can do to go along with this book, too (like focusing on shapes and colors)...

But first, for this month's original book, I cut an orange piece of felt into a pumpkin shape, cut out 3 black triangles for the jack-o-lantern's eyes and nose, then cut out the different mouth shapes that It's Pumpkin Day, Mouse! highlights.

Next, I read the book to Gv while she created the appropriate pumpkin face for each page.  At the end, she grabbed her scissors and the black felt scraps and cut out her own pieces to make a unique face of her own:

The outer pumpkins match the sequence of the story and the large one is Gv's unique creation!

After we stuffed all those felt pieces into a zippered bag for future play sessions, I cut out a construction-paper pumpkin and Gv glued it down on paper and then drew on a stem and some leaves to create a play mat:

Then I grabbed a bag of these I'd had in my classroom and printed out the build-a-pumpkin from here so Gv and I could create our own shape pumpkins:

This activity got Gv wanting to make a permanent shape pumpkin to hang up on the wall, so together we cut out a bunch of shapes to use as supplies:

She decided to cut her pumpkin into a trapezoid (she knows trapezoid, but still can't remember the shape "square" to save her life - go figure!) and then dictated the other shapes for me to cut for her (circle, rhombus, rectangle, square, triangle, semi-circle, & hexagon)

And then Gv glued everything down:

I love how she cut part of a rectangle tooth off at the top so that it would fit better in the pumpkin's mouth!

She had so much fun with that, she wanted to make another one, so I gathered a variety of other supplies (colorful craft sticks, googly eyes, glitter, feathers and buttons) for her to use.

First, she glued the orange sticks over a few green ones to make her pumpkin:

Then she made it all fancy:

She wanted something different for the mouth, so took some foil sitting on the kitchen counter, crumpled it up and glued it down.  I never would have thought of that one, but I guess she wanted to amp up the sparkle factor!

I'd also come across some cute pumpkin stuff on a few other blogs, so I printed out a couple for us to do.

I chose a couple of pages from this giant pack:

Dot-to-dot

Roll & Graph

Face matching

Maze

Shape matching cards

She also did this cute little matching game:

And then when G got home, all three of us played this competitive (and silly) pumpkin-drawing race game:

I was behind for most of the game, yet somehow my "Cleetus" pulled ahead at the end to win. G's voodoo pumpkin looks the coolest, though (of course, he's the only one who didn't have others adding features to it, which was a fun aspect of the game)

Finally, we were inspired by this to make our own little Spookley out of pipe cleaners and straws:

Gv cut the straws herself (I cut the first one for her to use as a guide) and we worked together to put the pipe cleaners in.

We used pipe cleaners for his face, too, because after all the other pumpkin fun we had, I was just too lazy for any other option!


I love coming up with book connections like this, how about you?  I'd love to hear!  Either leave a comment below or email me at lisahealy (at) outlook (dot) com.

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Check out the other amazing Pumpkin Day Mouse crafts that my fellow bloggers came up with:

Come back next month and see what crafts and activities we come up with for Have You Seen My Monster. Join our Facebook Group HERE to participate.

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