The Pumpkin Runner

Our FIAR book this week is The Pumpkin Runner by Marsha Diane Arnold. (Whenever possible, I matched our FIAR books to our NOW countries to give a theme to our week.) This book is about Joshua Summerhayes, the energy he gets from eating pumpkins, and his run from Melbourne to Sydney. This unlikely sheep farmer actually wins the 900k race and the $10,000 prize money while wearing overalls and gumboots. When he wins, he shares the $$$ with the other racers, even the one who tried to cheat. There were a lot of great lessons for the boys about sportsmanship in this book. And a lot of new vocabulary too. The other pumpkin books we read this week were: Apples and Pumpkins by Anne Rockwell, Pumpkin Pumpkin by Jeanne Titherington, and Patty's Pumpkin Patch by Teri Sloat. The last one was my favorite. Along with the story, it has an alphabet through the pumpkin patch. And inside the front flap, there is information about the illustrations; beautiful ones, I might add. (The artwork was prepared with acrylic on 300wt. Arches cold press watercolor paper, with oil pastel overlay. Pastel grounds were spread over the acrylic and oil pastel to allow for final decorating with acrylic.)

In Science, we learned that the pumpkin is a squash. The flowers of a pumpkin were the same as the zucchini flowers in our garden this summer. We also talked about the cross section of a pumpkin and made these. We tasted the pumpkin seeds. R was the only one that really liked them, she ate a small handful. L said "YUCK!" and wouldn't even swallow one. We talked about how Joshua got his energy like Daniel in the Bible. Eating wisely makes us strong and healthy.

In Math, we're learning about patterns. L decorated his pumpkin with patterns, while T and R just glued shapes on theirs.

We worked on lacing pumpkins to use as decorations later. This is good small moter development for L. It will help him with his penmanship. He's made huge improvements with his lacing since St.Patrick's Day when we laced shamrocks.

I haven't gotten around to making the pumpkin muffins that were planned, but we still have the weekend.