Search Results for: pumpkin

Lunch and Breakfast Ideas with Pumpkins for Kids

October 15, 2012 By Deirdre

October has been a crazy and busy month. On Wednesday we went to the pumpkin patch with JDaniel’s class, rushed from the farm the patch was on to his speech assessment and then to a local park to visit with some playgroup friends we haven’t seen in ages. Thankfully the park is less than a mile from the testing site. The farm was forty minutes away from our church’s school where the testing took place. With so much going on I created lunch and breakfast ideas we could take on the go if we needed to.

With all that going on I knew I needed to pack JDaniel a bento lunch to have at some point. He ended up having it in the waiting area of the testing center. I was so glad I had brought it with me the testing ran over an hour and it was 1:30 p.m. before he finished. The tester commented that he had so much to say it was hard to move on to the other questions on the language part of the test.

Lunch Ideas

What did he have for lunch? He had pumpkins spice marshmallows, pumpkin spice cream cheese spread on a flour tortilla and cut into sections, carrots (left uneaten), red grapes, and ham and Colby Jack pumpkin cutouts.

Breakfast Ideas

A breakfast muffin tin meal with a pumpkin theme was also served this week. JDaniel has started asking for a flour tortilla and Colby Jack cheese for breakfast. Some mornings he gets all the ingredients out and makes it himself. This lunch features his favorite breakfast sandwich in a the shape of a pumpkin. He also got sweet potato french fries leftover from the night before, pumpkin spice marshmallows, red grapes, raisin bran, and frozen yogurt pumpkin.JDaniel doesn’t usually get dessert at breakfast time, but he loves the marshmallows and I thought I would spoil him a little.

We have loved taste testing pumpkin relate products we have found at the store.

More Lunch and Breakfast Ideas

Breakfast Ideas Kids will Love

Breakfast Rice Recipes

What is your favorite pumpkin product?

Read.Explore.Learn- How Many Seeds in a Pumpkin?

October 28, 2011 By Deirdre

Welcome to Read.Explore.Learn.! This meme was designed to be a place for you to share the learning opportunities, crafts, field trips, and other activities you have done this week that tie-in to children’s books. I look forward to seeing ways you have learned with and explored books.
Steps:

- Link your activity below.

- Please place the Read.Explore.Learn. badge on your post or create a link back to this meme.

- Please try to visit at least three of the other people that have placed links below and leave a comment. I will visit each of you and leave a kind comment.

- If you are not linking up an activity and are just visiting, please try to stop by a few of the links below.

My Book Tie-Ins of the Week:

How Many Seeds in a Pumpkin? by Margaret McNamara and G. Brian Karas is a wonderful book about counting pumpkins seeds. It turns out you don’t have be the biggest kids in the class to guess the right number of seeds.

Charlie is in the wonderful Mr. Tiffin’s class. Mr. Tiffin challenges his class to guess whether a small, medium, or large pumpkin will have the most seeds. He has the class brainstorm how many seeds are in each pumpkin. When it is Charlie’s turn, he thinks the best guesses are all taken.

The next day the class uses spoon, bowls, and bags they have brought in to scoop, hold, and later throw away the guts and seeds of the pumpkins. Before the students headed home, Mr. Tiffin asked them to think about how to count them.

The next day they decide to count the pumpkin seeds from the big pumpkin by twos. The seeds from the medium pumpkin will be counted by fives it is decided. Charlie thinks the small pumpkin’s seeds should be counted by tens.

After arranging the seeds into number groups, they were counted. The large pumpkin had 170 pairs or 340 seeds. The medium pumpkin has 63 groups or 315 seeds. Charlie had 35 groups or 350 seeds.

Charlie is thrilled to learn that size doesn’t matter in pumpkins. Mr. Tiffen says, “Small things can have a lot going on in them.”

Mr. Tiffin taught me that for each line outside a pumpkin there is a row of seeds inside. Pumpkins that grow longer get darker and gets more lines. Guess what? Charlie’s pumpkin was dark orange and had many more lines than the others.

What did we do?

Cleaning Out Pumpkin Seeds

We cleaned the seeds out of a pumpkin. JDaniel didn’t like the gooey parts.

Counting Seeds

I found a great placemat at Dollar Tree with a grid on it. We placed on seed in each square on the placemat and then counted them.

Cover the Spider Legs Game

We rolled the die to see how many seeds we got to put on each spider leg when it was our turn. It was fun to practice counting. At the end of each turn, we cleared the seeds on the spider.

Roasting Pumpkin Seeds

We tossed pumpkin seeds with olive oil, cinnamon, and sugar and then toasted them in the oven. They came out yummy. JDaniel loved them so much he asked that I take a picture of them.

This post is linked to Feed Me Books Friday, Link and Learn, We Play and It’s Playtime .

This post contains affiliate links.

Halloween Party Ideas- Crafting a Pumpkin Salad

October 6, 2011 By Deirdre

I thought it would be fun to do a Halloween craft with food. JDaniel and I headed to the Fresh Market salad bar and I had him select foods he would like to try. We would use those foods to create a Halloween salad.

We ended up with a variety of foods. Some were brand new and others were old favorites.

I placed all the ingredients in an ice cube tray and showed him how to create a pumpkin face using some of the ingredients in orange pepper slices with celery stems.

The tray contains edamame, chickpeas, pumpkin seeds, red cabbage, yellow squash, fried wonton strips, mushrooms, celery, uncooked corn, carrot shavings, cauliflower, pineapple, raisins, and cheerios. This Halloween salad was a fun way for JDaniel to try new foods.

Then he started to create faces of his own while taste-testing the ingredients. JDaniel said that the wanton was filled with many holes that looked like many eyes. I thought that was a great idea.

He didn’t finish everything. We ended up wrapping the tray with the remaining food up with plastic. JDaniel said he wanted to do it again at dinner time.

I was happy to see that he tried many of the new foods. The chickpeas and wantons have become a new favorite.

This post is linked to Mama Kat’s Writer’s Workshop, It’s Playtime, Adventures-In-Mommyland and will be linked to my Halloween Traditions link upon October 27th when it starts.

P.S. The Halloween Traditions link up event will include four link-ups. They are Halloween Costumes, Halloween Foods, Halloween Crafts, and Traditions or Memories. I look forward to seeing what you come up with for this link-up that begins Oct. 24^th and ends Nov. 2^nd.

If you like this Halloween activity, here are some more Halloween activities to explore with your children.

Halloween Bat Craft

Halloween Number Puzzles

Almost Wordless Wednesday- Pretty Pumpkins

October 20, 2010 By Deirdre

We found such a variety of beautiful pumpkins at a local pumpkin stand. I had to take a picture of some of the more unusual ones.

I love the lace pattern on these pumpkins

These white and green pumpkins are stunning.

JDaniel loved these too.
He ultimately picked a traditional orange pumpkin.

Read.Explore.Learn- Pumpkins

October 15, 2010 By Deirdre

Welcome to Read. Explore. Learn! This meme was designed to be a place for you to share the learning opportunities, crafts, field trips, and other activities you have done this week that tie-in to children’s books. I look forward to seeing ways you have learned with and explored books.

Steps:

Link your activity below.

Please place the Read.Explore.Learn. badge on your post or create a link back to this meme.

Please try to visit as many of the other links as you can. I will visit each of you and leave a kind comment.

My Book Tie-In of the Week

We read Five Little Pumpkins illustrated by Ben Mantle. This wonderful version of the book has light hearted pictures that didn’t scare JDaniel. I love the happy pumpkins and fun characters in the book. It is a padded board board which I have found helps books last. That is really important when it comes to this book. We will be reading it for a long time.

Craft

We painted egg carton cups with orange bingo markers and placed them on a fence. It was fun to use the egg pumpkins to retell the story. The green strips were left over from a Sunday school lesson I taught two weeks ago. They are lick and stick.

Experiment

Orange food coloring was created using red and yellow neon food coloring. JDaniel and I mixed the colors using cotton balls. This was fun, but very messy.

Disclaimer: I review books for Tiger Tales. Five Little Pumpkins is a book I was sent to review. The thoughts about the book are my own.

Decisions about Halloween and Pumpkins

October 13, 2010 By Deirdre

There are so many decisions families make about Halloween.

Here are a few we have talked about at my house:

Will we trick or treat?

Some families don’t trick or treat. They have legitimate reasons and have decided not to participate. My husband and I both trick or treated when we were little and decided that it would be all right for JDaniel to dress up and visit houses in our neighborhood.

Will you put out a pumpkin?

Yes. We both had pumpkins on our porches when we were little and don’t see this as a problem for us.

Will the pumpkin have a face carved into it?

Yes. We decided that we could have a happy face carved into a pumpkin. I am totally aware of the history of carved pumpkins. A parent wrote me a three-page letter on the horrors of Halloween when I first started teaching twenty years ago. He detailed as much of the ancient history and meaning of Halloween objects he felt I needed to know followed by a declaration that his child wasn’t to participate in any Halloween related activities in the classroom. I think he had a right to share his thoughts about Halloween with me. His feelings on the subject were respected and I let his daughter abstain from activities that would have been objectionable to him.

Will we decorate the outside of the house with skeletons and ghosts?

No. JDaniel recently noticed some Halloween decorations at a friend’s house and was scared of them. They weren’t going to be a part of our Halloween décor anyway. We certainly wouldn’t be doing them even if we had planned to do them with JDaniel’s fear of them.

Will we read Halloween related books?

Yes. I am reviewing one this week in Read. Explore.Learn. I am not pointing out witches or ghosts out and discussing them. If he asks about what they are, I will tell him what they are called. At two he probably won’t want an in-depth discussion anyway.

Please Don’t Call Me Pumpkin In Public!

October 12, 2010 By Deirdre

I have so many cute nicknames for JDaniel. Some stick around for a long time like “Cutie Patootie” and “Lion” as in Daniel in the lion’s den. Some are temporary and fit an activity we are doing like “Super Rake Boy” and “The King of Clean Up”. He seems to love them all. JDaniel loves terms of endearment. I think he sees them as a form of praise or acknowledgement of love.

Of course he is two and half and hasn’t really reached a point where I really embarrass him. It is almost as if we live in our own little world even while we are out and about. I can joke and tease him and he thinks it is fun. I can push him on the swings and he giggles joyfully when I call him a “Rocketing Toddler in Space”. He roars even louder when he jumps up from behind bushes and I call him “My Ferocious One”. JDaniel runs faster into my arms when I call for “Sweet JDaniel” to come.

I really don’t look forward to the “Ah! Mom, please don’t call me that in front of my friends or anyone.” The cries of “Do you do this to embarrass me?” or “Shh! don’t ever say that again!” will soon fill my ears. There will be a time when he will just stand there and shake his head.

I don’t look forward to that. I really love having these little nicknames I can use and he enjoys. Maybe he will still let me use them at home.

When did your children ask you to stop with nicknames?

Are you still allowed to use them in the house?

Are there nicknames that have stuck and are part of your children’s public persona?

Muffin Tin Monday- A Great Pumpkin Tin?

October 11, 2010 By Deirdre

The theme for Muffin Tin Monday is pumpkins this week. I have been brainstorming for about a week to come up with ideas for this tin.

Idea One: I found this idea for the pumpkin fruit salad and knew it was right up JDaniel’s alley.
Idea Two: I could make grilled cheese sandwiches and carve a face in the bread. After the first cut I realized that this was not going to work. The cheese was cemented to the bread. The sandwiches still ended up in the tin minus the cute faces I planned to put in them.
Idea Three: There are tons of great recipes that have pumpkin in them. I could try one of them and put it in the tin. There were no cans of pumpkin on the shelves at the two stores I went to.

Idea Four: Take something and make it look like a pumpkin. I took several peach slices and put them in a pumpkin shaped array. A raisin was placed on the top of them to look like a stem.

Idea Five: Place something orange in the tin and call it a day. I found some carrots in the fridge and added them to the tin with a cup of ranch dressing to dip them in.

Pumpkin Finger Plays, Books, Crafts, Recipes and More- Links 4 Moms

October 29, 2009 By Deirdre

This site has tons of resources for mom’s of toddlers and preschoolers.There is a wonderful book list on pumpkins. There are a number of books just on pumpkins and not Halloween. There is also lots and lots of activities to do with your toddler. Please check this one out if you have young children.

Mommyhood Craft-Bingo! I have a Pumpkin Print

October 27, 2009 By Deirdre

This is a simple pumpkin craft that JDaniel and I were able to do together. I cut a circle out of construction paper.

JDaniel and I used orange and green bingo markers to create spots the orange circle. Then added a green stem and attached it to black construction paper Voila! We painted pumpkin with very little mess.

Later I hung his creation on the refrigerator. JDaniel walked by several times proudly pointing at his creation.