Pumpkin Fall Themed Sensory Activities

When my daughter was younger, she loved to play with the insides of the pumpkin when it was time to carve the jack o’lantern. In the years since she’s decided the inside of a pumpkin smells bad, but playing with pumpkin guts is a classic sensory activity that kids of all ages generally love.

Here are some more fun and easy pumpkin sensory activities to do at home or in the classroom, with real pumpkins or just pumpkin smells and colors.

Let’s start with a collection of pumpkin sensory activities using real pumpkins from Everyday Chaos and Calm. From pumpkin washing to hammering to painting, there are lots of fun ideas here (and this delves into pumpkin STEM activities as well).

If you have a kid who likes to play with pumpkin guts, you can take the slimy sensory factor up even further by making pumpkin slime that includes pumpkin guts. You can even mix it up in a pumpkin! Get the recipe from Little Bins for Little Hands.

If you’d rather have a slime that’s not quite so slimy, you can try this pumpkin spice slime from Sunshine Whispers.

How about pumpkin spice playdough? (I made some of this years ago when my daughter was in her playdough phase, and ti smells so good!) Another recipe is from Natural Beach Living, and this is a sensory activity you can use throughout the fall all the way through Thanksgiving.

And while we’re on the classic sensory substances, why not make some pumpkin scented moon sand, too? This recipe is made with pumpkin puree so it’s actually taste safe for those kiddos who always put everything in their mouths. You can get the recipe from Parenting Chaos.

For a different kind of sensory experience, try this pumpkin sensory matching activity from I Can Teach My Child. Just load fun things into orange balloons and see if kids can touch their way to matches. Or just do different sensory balloons for the classroom without the matching activity.

Are you looking for the best sensory toys and activities for your child? Explore our comprehensive resources to enhance your child’s sensory play and development. Check out our curated Amazon Idea List featuring top-rated sensory toys and items, and don’t miss our expertly written articles on sensory activities. Start creating fun and educational sensory experiences today!

With little kids especially, linking learning to physical activity really does help them learn. Movement can help kids focus, and it just keeps them from sitting still all day, which isn’t good for anyone.

The good news is lots of different learning activities can be adopted to get kids moving while they learn, so let’s look at some math and number activities that use gross motor skills.

Probably the most obvious thing would be hopscotch, which helps kids count while they hop. You can also mix up the numbers, do skip counting with the numbers, give kids a simple math problem and have them hop to the correct answer, and on and on.

This number hop game from Gift of Curiosity is a more chaotic version, with number flash cards on the floor that kids can hop, skip or jump to as you call them out (this one is more for individual number identification than counting). It’s a great indoor option if it’s too hot, cold or rainy out to do traditional hopscotch, too.

This painter’s tape number line idea from Days with Grey doesn’t involve quite as much movement, but kids can move around while they place things on the number line and work on learning about one to one correspondence. In the blog post they use shoes, but you can count anything you’ve got handy. (Be warned when I visited this website had an ad that continually took up the whole page, but you can get the idea pretty quickly.)

One of the important tasks of learning numbers is learning a parent’s phone number just in case it’s ever needed, or how to dial 911 in case on an emergency. Teaching Mama has a great way to practice telephone numbers and get some movement in with a giant telephone keypad made out of paper plates. You can also use this for counting practice, but it’s a great idea for learning phone numbers, too.

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