I made a pumpkin activity to work on early math skills as well as fine motor development. I printed out the pattern on cardstock paper. If you are not going to be using glue with this activity I recommend laminating the pumpkin mats for durability. 

The patterns come in both black and white as well as color and also with or without dots. The color patterns come with a blue sky or just a white background so you have a variety of patterns to work with to suit the needs of how you will be doing the activities.

Besides the pumpkin mat you will need to have pumpkin seeds and dice for the children to roll. We also use school glue that we put in a small container with q-tips. I also do the activity with no glue so the mat is re-usable. 

In this activity children roll the dice and put a pumpkin seed on the same number of dots on the mat. Play continues until all dots have been covered. We also work in pairs with each child having their own mat ... dice ... and pumpkin seeds. They take turns rolling the dice and covering the dots on the mat.

Children can also do a pumpkin craft by simply gluing the seeds on the pumpkin. This can be done with or without dots. The children can color in the black and white pattern first before gluing the seeds on. You can see a video of this activity and download the patterns below.

pumpkin fine motor math patterns

We love working with pumpkins seeds ... there are so many things your can do with them!! I set this activity up in our math center using two pumpkin bowls that I purchased from Target.  You can use any kind of bowl or container that works for you.  I put the pumpkin seeds in one of the bowls and set out a pair of jumbo tweezers along with dice.

The children rolled the dice and then used the tweezers to transfer the same number of pumpkin seeds into the empty bowl.  They continued to roll the dice until all of the pumpkins seeds had been transferred. This activity can also be done without the tweezers and/or the dice.

You can see a video of this activity by clicking below:

I recently attended a make and take session and one of the things we made was pumpkin spice paint.  It is super easy to make but I felt the recipe we used was a bit too runny so I modified it a little.

To make the paint I put three packets of unflavored gelatine into a jar along with 1 cup of boiling water and mixed the two together until the gelatine was dissolved.  I added yellow and red food coloring and stirred until I had an orange color I was happy with.

The last step was to add the pumpkin pie spice into the paint.  I just continued to shake some in until I got the scent that I wanted.  Everyone loved how the paint smelled and were very excited to paint with it.

I let the paint cool down which also helped to thicken it.  The children then painted large circles on cardstock paper.  When they painted they could see the specks of pumpkin spice.  We let that paint dry and cut out the circle and glue it on to a sheet of colored cardstock paper.  The children cut out a leaf and stem and glue that on the pumpkin.  They then glue pumpkin seeds on for extra fine motor work.
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You can see a video of our pumpkin spice paint below:

As part of our fall theme I made scarecrow sequence puzzles for number recognition and review. I printed the patterns on cardstock paper ... laminated them and then cut along the lines so there were ten puzzles strips for each puzzle.

I mixed the puzzle strips up and set them out. Children had to sort through the strips and put them in numerical order to complete the puzzles. There are numbers 1-10 ... 11-20 and 21-30 puzzle sets.

As of 2022 this activity can be found in the member's section which is also where I have added pumpkin letter tracing sheets.

I have made a set of pumpkin themed math mats for children to practice counting and number recognition.  I printed the patterns on cardstock paper ... cut them out and then laminated them.

We used pumpkin seeds as our counters but you can also use other items such as pom poms ... playdough balls ... and clothespins.  This activity is also great for developing fine motor skills which if you are a follow of my blog you know I love to work on!! ​

You can download the patterns below:

pumpkin math maths

I really love colored pumpkin seeds. They are so easy to make and you can do so many things with them such as sorting ... counting ... graphing ... and art activities.

To make the colored pumpkin seeds you will need:

clean dry pumpkin seeds
1/2 -2/3 cup warm water per color
1 tablespoon of vinegar per color
food coloring

For each color of pumpkins seeds you want to make you will place the warm water in a cup and then add the vinegar. Add you food color of choice and mix. Pour in dried pumpkin seeds and stir. The longer you leave the pumpkin seeds in the food color mixture the darker the color will be. We let ours stay in for a couple of ours and stirred them a few times.

When the pumpkin seeds have reached the desired color scoop them out with fork and place on a cookie sheet that has been lined with paper towels. After a couple of hours you can place the pumpkin seeds on a wax paper lined cookie sheet or tray. Dry for 24 hours (could be less or more time depending upon the temperature of the air).

You can see a video of the colored pumpkin seeds by clicking below: