A Neighborhood Kindergarten : Pumpkin FUN! Five for Friday... on Sunday!

THIS is what LEARNING looks like y'all!!!

This week was all about pumpkins in my classroom and we kicked it off with a fun pumpkin exploration activity. We used our five senses and got up close and personal with a pumpkin. Each of my students got to reach inside the pumpkin to help clean it out and they had a blast! We read The Runaway Pumpkin toward the end of the day and I brought made from scratch pumpkin bread (muffins) for the students to taste. They loved it!

We learned about the parts of the pumpkin!!!

I taught the Pumpkin Patch parable in chapel!

Thanks to my awesome boyfriend and his roommate for carving our adorable pumpkin! I used the pumpkin to share the Gospel with the K4 and K5 students at BCA! We talked about how God made people perfect, but we allowed sin to come into the world. After defining sin as disobeying God we talked about how our sin is like the "gross stuff" inside of the pumpkin. Just as the pumpkin needs to be cleaned out, so do we. We talked about how doing "good things" (giving money in church, not getting in trouble at school, etc.) can not take our sin away. It doesn't matter what other things I put inside of the pumpkin, the "gross stuff" was still there! Ultimately, we talked about how Jesus took the punishment for our sin and he is the ONLY one who can fix our problem and clean us out, just like the farmer cleans out the pumpkin. We talked about having a new identify in Christ and removed the pieces of the pumpkin that had already been carved. Placing a tea light inside of the pumpkin, I explained to students that when we become a Christian God sends us his Holy Spirit to help us shine for Him and reflect his glory. Our job is to worship and glorify God and let our light shine so that others may see it and do the same! We discussed how people continue to sin even after they accept Christ, but are still forgiven. We learned that when we sin we are blocking some of the light, just as if we put some of the carved pieces back in the pumpkin.

We learned all about the life cycle of a pumpkin and students completed this craftivity INDEPENDENTLY during literacy center time! So proud of their hard work!