The narrator of the trade picture book Somethin' Pumpkin by Scott Allen (with illustrations by Jimmy Pickering) [smallfellow press, 2001] notes that "[a] pumpkin is possibly so many things," and that there are "[n]o limits at all to the things it can be."
After helping elementary students identify the main idea of this book (that with a little imagination, a pumpkin can be turned into anything), examine with them the many imaginative uses pumpkins are put to in this book, teach them steps to follow to create and use a plan for building a new invention, and have them draw and follow blueprints to build their own pumpkin inventions.
Objectives
- Students will identify and discuss the main idea of a book.
- Students will follow steps for designing, planning, and building an invention.
Introduce and Share the Book
Display the book's cover and discuss the title and picture. Have students identify what is shown (a big pumpkin with various arms reaching for it) and discuss why the arms might be reaching for the pumpkin. Flip through the book and have students predict what it will be about. Read the book aloud and check predictions.
Reading Lesson: Identify and Discuss Main Idea
- Explain that the main idea of a book is the overall message of the author, or the point that he or she is trying to make.
- Work with students to summarize the contents of the book.
- Reread the last spread and have students offer suggestions for what the main idea of this book could be.
- For assessment, help students write one or two sentences summarizing the main idea of the book.
What Inventions Are Described in This Book?
Review with students the uses to which pumpkins and pumpkin shells are put in this book, making a list of those uses that are inventions (or at least things that were built for a purpose), such as:
- boat for black cats
- apartments for arachnids
- helmet for Frankenstein football
- car for bats
- alien spaceship
- skeleton's bongo drums
- cauldron for cooking pumpkin food
How Can Students Plan and Build Pumpkin Inventions?
Provide students with craft materials and either small pumpkins or lumps of orange clay. Suggest that students use the following steps to build their own pumpkin inventions:
- Think of an idea for a use for a pumpkin that fills a need or does work.
- Design your invention and draw a picture of it to serve as a blueprint plan.
- Make a list of the materials you will need to build your invention.
- Make a set of directions to follow to assemble your invention.
- Use the materials and your directions to build your invention, altering your design as needed while building it if the original design turns out not to work or if you think of a better design once you start actually putting your invention together.
- Write a description of how your invention is to be used and present it to the class.
Enrichment Activities
Try some cross-curricular enrichment activities relating to the other pumpkin uses in the book.
- For art activities, make a model of one of the pumpkin inventions; decorate a pumpkin as a scarecrow head; wrap a pumpkin in cloth strips or make a papiér-mâché mummy pumpkin; or make felt facial features to move back and forth between a felt ghost and a felt pumpkin.
- For an integrated language arts and drama activity, have groups write and act out scenes about being a robot that eats pumpkins for fuel or a scientist conducting experiments on a pumpkin.
- For a physical activity to develop fine-motor skills and eye-hand coordination, clear a space in the classroom and let students try to juggle orange balls or actual small (stemless) pumpkins.
Seeing the range of uses to which pumpkins are put in Somethin' Pumpkin will inspire children to create their own pumpkin inventions, and following steps to plan and build these inventions will provide children with practice with a strategy they can use any time they must plan and build something.
Try a lesson plan for The Littlest Pumpkin for another lesson about plan-making.
Renee Carver - Renée Carver has an Elementary Education degree and over ten years of experience writing and editing children's educational products.
Join the Conversation