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Five Little Pumpkins

Five Little Pumpkins is a Halloween-themed activity for young children with visual impairments, including those with multiple disabilities or additional special needs.

Five Little Pumpkins items for students that include 5 plastic pumkins on a felt board and a larger pumpkin with a flashlight, with tactile numbers

In this activity, the Halloween poem “Five Little Pumpkins” is used  to work on counting, matching, fine motor skills, and visual attention.  The image on the right shows a pumpkin with press-on light to make it glow, and 5 mini pumpkins velcroed to an All-in-One Board with switch for story. Objects for door, tree, shoe, and sun are also pictured.

Materials

  • orange pumpkin bucket
  • numbers 0-5 cut out and covered with different colors of mylar
  • shoe
  • sun prop
  • press-on light
  • APH All-in-One Board
  • 5 mini pumpkins
  • tree and door made from cardstock

Procedure

Begin with the poem:

5 little pumpkins sitting by a door, 1 rolled away and now there are 4.

4 little pumpkins sitting by a tree, 1 rolled away and now there are 3.

3 little pumpkins sitting by a shoe, 1 rolled away and now there are 2.

2 little pumpkins sitting in the sun, 1 rolled away and now there is 1.

1 little pumpkin looking for fun! 

  • Record the poem on a Step-by-Step switch.
  • Students take turns pressing the switch to play the poem.
  • Students take turns taking one pumpkin off and dropping it in the pumpkin bucket.
  • Ask students to find the various objects and numbers and set them up on the All-in-One Board.
Pumpkin bucket is lit up.
Light up the pumpkin bucket to draw visual attention to it.
Spotlighting can be used to direct visual attention to a number or a particular item on the All-in-One-Board.
Spotlighting can be used to direct visual attention to a number or a particular item on the All-in-One-Board.
A child explores an illuminated pumpkin decoration.
A child explores an illuminated pumpkin decoration.

Variations

  • Light up a jack-o-lantern and encourage children with low vision to locate it and reach out to touch it.
  • 5 Little Bats, skeletons, spiders, eyeballs and more to follow this month!
Collage of 5 Little Pumpkins

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