Pumpkin Seed Counting

Yesterday, I shared how Baby Bear and I used candy corn to decorate ears of corn and practice counting to five. In continuation of our counting crafts, Baby Bear and I decorated pumpkins with pumpkin seeds to practice numbers six through ten. When we did our ears of corn, Baby Bear did not want to color them beforehand. He was too excited about the candy, counting, and gluing. So, we did the pumpkins a little differently by decorating them in two steps. The first step was painting them using dish soap paints. I chose this type of paint because the color doesn't lighten too much when it dries, but you can still see the black lines of the coloring sheet through the paint. The next day, when the pumpkins were dry and I had them cut out, I wrote out numbers on the stem of each pumpkin, and Baby Bear helped me count out that many glue dots onto the pumpkin. Then, he added pumpkin seeds to each of the glue dots, which provided some hand-eye coordination and fine motor skills practice. When the glue was dry, we hung the pumpkins up with the ears of corn to create a sort of food-themed numbers chart. Baby Bear was so proud of his food with numbers that he bounced excitedly as he showed daddy his work when he got home.

Painting the pumpkins

Our food-themed number chart

Baby Bear didn't like that I was taking a picture of his work without him, so he jumped in and shouted, "Cheese!"