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Fun and Educational Pumpkin Activities and Recipes for Homeschoolers

It’s almost fall. Soon we will see signs of fall like colorful leaves, yummy fall treats, and pumpkins!

If you want more pumpkin-related or fall-related ideas for your homeschool, you might enjoy these articles: Pumpkin Pointillism: An Art Lesson in Primary Colors, 7 Must Read Harvest Books for Young Children, Science Experiment: Use Chromatography to Extract Color from Green Leaves (Do this one before all of the leaves start to turn!), and Apple Tree Landscape Tutorial.

You don’t have to put a scary face on a pumpkin to enjoy the most iconic image of fall. In fact, pumpkins can be the base for many fun and educational pumpkin activities in your homeschool. These activities will help you feel festive and provide fun hands-on learning activities for your kids at the same time. These activities are so fun, you may be sad when fall finally leaves!

DPC Fun and Educational Pumpkin Activities

Cooking is one of the most educational activities you can do with your kids, and it’s tasty, too! Use this simple tutorial to make a pumpkin-shaped cake. Talk about measuring, the science behind baking, and the properties of pumpkins while you are at it! Bonus points if you use real pumpkin in your cake.

We accidentally did this rotting pumpkin science experiment last year when our carved pumpkins got too hot! Surprisingly enough, they rotted away to almost nothing. That’s what I told Monkey and Bo we were doing when it was rotting. We weren’t too lazy to clean it up; we were doing Science!

I just love the texture of moon sand, and this orange pumpkin version is incredibly festive. Use pumpkin spices to make it even smell like a pumpkin (well, pumpkin pie, anyway).

Similar to our apple life cycle printable, this printable explores the life cycle of pumpkins. What a fun idea to learn about how a pumpkin grows in just a few seconds rather than taking almost a year to see it in action.

Pumpkins can be the inspiration behind some seriously fun and quite educational learning. For example, this pumpkin unit offers several ways to learn about pumpkins using math, art, geography, geometry, and more! There are almost endless ways to learn using pumpkins of all shapes and sizes.

Bonus: Pumpkin Seed Math

We love pumpkins, and one of our favorite things to do each year is make roasted pumpkin seeds. (See recipes below.) But that isn’t the only thing you can do with pumpkins. You can also make the seeds educational!

Help young children learn to count by counting the seeds or practicing basic addition and subtraction.

Elementary kids can group the seeds together to learn multiplication or division.

Middle school and high school kids can calculate how many pumpkins would be able to grow from the seeds in this pumpkin. You could go over probability (how many would sprout), estimation, yield, and even determine how much money could be made if every pumpkin grown sold for $5.

What are your favorite ways to learn with pumpkins? Share them with us! And enjoy these recipes!

And be sure to take a look at these other fall- and pumpkin-related posts!

Pumpkin Pointillism: An Art Lesson in Primary Colors

7 Must Read Harvest Books for Young Children

Science Experiment: Use Chromatography to Extract Color from Green Leaves (Do this one before all of the leaves start to turn!)

Apple Tree Landscape Tutorial

 

Sweet Roasted Pumpkin Seeds
Make these yummy sweet pumpkin seeds for a fun and healthy snack!
Ingredients
  • 1 pumpkin (or purchased organic raw pumpkin seeds) about 4 cups of seeds
  • 1/2 cup butter
  • 2 tbsp brown sugar
  • 1 tsp ground cinnamon
  • 1/4 tsp salt
  • 1/4 cup white sugar
Instructions
  1. To seed your pumpkin: Scoop pulp out of pumpkin with a spoon. To clean the seeds, separate seeds from stringy pulp. Then rinse seeds in a colander. Spread seeds in a single layer on an oiled cookie sheet and roast in a 300 oven for 20 to 30 minutes to dry. Watch carefully to be sure they don’t burn.
  2. Mix seeds, melted butter, brown sugar, cinnamon, and salt in a bowl.
  3. Bake in 300 oven for 6 to 10 minutes.
  4. Remove from oven, sprinkle on white sugar, and return to oven for 6 to 10 more minutes.
  5. Cool before serving.
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Savory Roasted Pumpkin Seeds
Make these yummy savory pumpkin seeds for a fun and healthy snack!
Ingredients
  • 1 pumpkin (or purchased raw organic pumpkin seeds) about 4 cups of seeds
  • 1 tbsp olive oil
  • 1 tbsp chili powder
  • 1 tbsp soy sauce
  • 1 tsp garlic powder
  • salt to taste
Instructions
  1. To seed your pumpkin: Scoop pulp out of pumpkin with a spoon. To clean seeds, separate seeds from stringy pulp. Then rinse seeds in a colander. Spread seeds in a single layer on an oiled cookie sheet and roast in 300 oven for 20 to 30 minutes to dry. Watch carefully to be sure they don’t burn.
  2. Mix all ingredients in a bowl.
  3. Bake in 300 oven for 6 to 10 minutes.
  4. Stir.
  5. Bake 6 to 10 more minutes.
  6. Cool before serving.

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