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Pumpkin season is such a fun time to bring hands-on learning into your preschool or kindergarten classroom.
From matching letters and numbers to pumpkin writing, poems, math talks, and simple STEM challenges, there are so many ways to use a pumpkin theme while still practicing the skills your kids are already working on.
Below, you’ll find some of my favorite pumpkin activities for preschool, pre-k, TK, and kindergarten to use throughout October.
🎃 Pumpkin Literacy Activities
If you’re following along on Instagram or Facebook, you may have seen the following activities in action!
1. Pumpkin Alphabet Letter Matching
Turn alphabet practice into a hands-on fall literacy center with pumpkin letter cards.
The Pumpkin Alphabet Letter Matching Activity gives you three different ways to use the same set of cards:
- Write the Room
- Sensory Bin
- Flip and Find Card Game
You can practice uppercase letters, lowercase letters, or uppercase-to-lowercase matching.
Teacher Tip: For the younger kiddos, start with just a handful of letters instead of using the entire alphabet at once.
2. October Phonics Activities
October themes can make phonics practice feel a little more fun without changing the skills you need to teach.
The October Phonics Pack includes seasonal activities for letter identification, beginning sounds, and cvc words.
The activities are differentiated across three skill levels so you can work on foundational skills such as letter recognition, phonemic awareness, letter-sound correspondence, and early decoding.
3. Pumpkin Poems for Kids
Short, predictable poems are one of my favorite ways to build early literacy skills.
These Pumpkin poems for kids can be used to practice rhyming, vocabulary, fluency, print awareness, and word recognition—all within a fun October theme.
Read the poem together several times throughout the week. Add simple motions, find rhyming words, circle familiar letters, or let kids illustrate the poem.
Once they know it well, place a copy in your literacy center or poetry notebook so they can revisit it independently.
🎃 Pumpkin Math Activities
4. Pumpkin Number Matching
Practice number recognition and counting with a hands-on Pumpkin Number Matching Activity.
Kids choose a number card, identify the number, and find the matching pumpkin picture on their recording sheet.
Activities like this are easy to use in a math center because kids are moving, counting, matching, and recording their answers instead of simply completing another worksheet.
You can also place the cards in a sensory bin or around the room to add a little extra movement.🎃
5. Pumpkin-Themed Math Talks
Pumpkins show up frequently throughout the October Math Talks.
Instead of simply asking kids to find the correct answer, Math Talks encourage them to look closely, think about what they notice, and explain their mathematical thinking.
The October Math Talks include three levels, making it easier to use the same seasonal theme with kids at different stages of mathematical development.
6. Hands-on Pumpkin Counting Activity
This October Math Center helps children practice counting, number recognition, one-to-one correspondence, and number sense using an engaging pumpkin-themed counting mat.
Kids will love using manipulatives in the Count the Pumpkins counting activity while building numbers with number cards, tens-frame cards, and a 1–20 number line.
🎃 Pumpkin STEM Activities (FREE)
Pumpkins are perfect for simple preschool and kindergarten STEM challenges—and you can do plenty of them with materials you probably already have.
7. FREE Pumpkin Candy STEM Tower
For this simple pumpkin STEM challenge, give the kids pumpkin-shaped candy and wooden craft sticks and challenge them to build the tallest tower they can.
For an extra challenge, have kids count how many pumpkin candies and craft sticks they used or compare towers to see which is tallest.
8. Build a Fence for the Pumpkins
Place several mini pumpkins or pumpkin counters on the table.
Give kids craft sticks, blocks, LEGO bricks, playdough, or other loose parts and challenge them to build a fence that keeps all of the pumpkins inside.
For an extra challenge, ask them to make the fence taller, wider, or strong enough that it doesn’t fall over when you gently move the table.
🎃 Pumpkin Writing Activities
Pumpkins give young writers something familiar and concrete to talk about before they begin writing.
9. October Writing Prompts
Use your October Writing Prompts to bring seasonal vocabulary and experiences into your writing time.
Let beginning writers draw their ideas first and tell you about their picture.
For kids who aren’t ready to write independently, write helpful words on sticky notes for them to copy. You can also write their sentence with a highlighter and let them trace over it.
The goal is to help kids feel successful communicating an idea—not to expect every child to write an entire sentence independently.
10. Pumpkin Facts for Kids: Building Sentences
Informational writing can start much earlier than we sometimes think.
Begin by learning a few simple pumpkin facts for kids.
Talk about how pumpkins grow on vines, what is inside a pumpkin, the different colors pumpkins can be, and how a pumpkin changes as it grows.
Then use the Pumpkin Facts Building Sentences activity to help kids turn what they’ve learned into simple sentences.
🎃 Pumpkin Books for Kids
A good stack of pumpkin books for kids can connect your entire theme.
On this Amazon list, you will find a mix of fiction and nonfiction books about pumpkin patches, how pumpkins grow, pumpkin life cycles, jack-o’-lanterns, farms, and silly pumpkin stories.
Throughout the week, use your read-alouds to introduce vocabulary that will come up again during your math, science, literacy, and writing activities.
🎃 Pumpkin Crafts for Kids
Of course, you can’t have a pumpkin theme without making a few pumpkin crafts!
Try painting pumpkins, pumpkin stamping, paper plate pumpkins, pumpkin life cycle crafts, torn-paper pumpkins, or simple jack-o’-lantern art.
🎃 Planning Pumpkin Activities
You don’t need to fit all of these activities into one day.
Spread your pumpkin theme throughout a week or two so kids encounter the same vocabulary and concepts across different parts of their day.
Monday: Read a pumpkin book, introduce a pumpkin poem, and start a pumpkin anchor chart.
Tuesday: Practice number recognition with pumpkin number matching and use a pumpkin-themed Math Talk.
Wednesday: Try a pumpkin STEM challenge and talk about what worked and what kids would change.
Thursday: Learn a few pumpkin facts and complete a pumpkin writing activity.
Friday: Make a pumpkin craft, revisit the week’s poem, and read another favorite pumpkin book.
Using one theme across different subject areas makes the week feel connected without requiring you to completely change your normal classroom routine.
🎃 Free October Activities
Want a few seasonal activities to get started?
Grab the Free October Mini Pack for a collection of October activities you can add to your lesson plans.
👉 Grab the Free October Mini Pack
🎃 October Membership
If you love using one theme across literacy, math, writing, STEM, crafts, centers, and whole-group learning, take a look inside the Little Learning Corner Membership.
Each month, you’ll get a new collection of 25+ seasonal Pre-K and kindergarten resources, along with a flexible monthly planning guide to help you put them together.
For October, you’ll find coordinated fall, pumpkin, spider, monster, and Halloween-themed activities that you can use throughout the month.
Instead of searching for unrelated activities every time you plan a lesson, you’ll have seasonal resources designed to work together across your day.
👉 SEE WHAT’S INSIDE THE MEMBERSHIP
Save this collection of pumpkin activities for preschool and kindergarten so it’s ready when you start planning your October lessons!
