Welcome to my blog. This blog pretty much reflects me, and I am one eclectic person. I have restaurant reviews, shop reviews, posts about human trafficking, poems (written by me or just appreciated by me), reflections from sermons, events, old mission trip newsletters – and much more. There’s a whole category of posts on the wedding planning and I am now homeschooling our two kiddos, so there’s a smattering of info about that as well.
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Nothing says Autumn in the US like bright orange pumpkins and tall corn stalks! We love our pumpkins around here – oops, we still need to get our pumpkins for this year! While October is full of books about jack-o-lanterns and Halloween stories, my list does not include anything spooky, or related to the holiday, just in case that’s not your style. After all, there is so much interesting information about pumpkins and corn to keep us busy for this nature study.
You may find a free printable of my list of 23 books on – again for FREE. 🙂
If you want to skip the download, you can find the list on both or
When I lived in Japan, I learned that they also have a love for pumpkins, although they typically are picked while fully green. And they eat just about all of the pumpkin! If you’re like me, you’ve only really eaten pumpkin if it is put into a pie or pureed down into a soup base. But steamed pumpkin is a favorite of mine after enjoying it in Japan during the Autumn season (I also fell in love with eating foods when they are “in season” there. We are so very spoiled here in the US with readily available food all year long).
There are so many fun activities you can do with pumpkins and incorporate into your regular lessons. A quick science lesson would be to dissect the pumpkin into its parts, investigating the insides, dissecting the seeds, and then, of course, baking the seeds for a healthy snack ( so long as you go easy on the sugar). A great math lesson is to estimate how many seeds might be inside the pumpkin and then cut it open to count them out. Try counting them by 1s, or by 2s, 5s – they make great skip-counting manipulatives! (The book, How Many Seeds in a Pumpkin? gives a great description of this activity, and is in this book list) The same can be done with ears of corn, as you count out one row, try multiplying all the rows by that number to estimate how many kernals might be there. Did you know that there is a single strand of silk per kernal?? Amazing!
Social studies activities would be to learn about the cultural significance of pumpkins or squash across the planet. Especially if you’re in the US, learn about the Indigenous tradition of the Three Sisters – corn, beans, and pumpkins. A great book for that is included on the list called, Keepunumuk. In fact, I would recommend that book for the home library as it has beautiful artwork and a wonderful message, good for the whole year.
Finding international recipes for both pumpkins or corn, and then trying to replicate one or more of them is an excellent cultural awareness activity. Try adding a new favorite to your Thanksgiving celebrations to share with your extended family!
For an art project, corn stalk dolls is a fun activity! Save the corn husks, drying them out completely before a quick soak (for flexibility) to twist them into shape. Find easy instructions here! You will need several corn husks, twine, scissors, paper towels and then any fabric, felt, or buttons to dress and decorate your dolls, and glue to fix the clothing in place.
Disclaimer:This site uses some affiliate links. This costs you nothing, but helps supplement our homeschooling costs. Thank you for your support!
I have written quite a few poems over the years about the moon. I have loved it for a very long time. I like that it has a very set schedule, but it doesn’t follow the rules of daytime/nighttime. It pops up in the middle of the day sometimes. And then there’s the whole following you through the sky while driving.
It’s not a surprise, then, that the moon features in a ton of picture books!
You may find a free printable of my list of 35 books on – again for FREE. 🙂
If you want to skip the download, you can find the list on both or
One of my poems, The Moon-Cloud, was written back in 2010. Another, The Heavy Moon, was in 2006, while I was in my last year of college. And here is one of my first moon poems, written back in 2003, it was published in one of those National Poets Society books where they graciously offer you to pay to put it in (haha!):
Nighttime
Have you ever tried to chase the moon? As its soft yellow crescent rocks down to the horizon?
While the stars dance around it and drip light through the seas that darken its surface.
Have you seen it grow as it dips beneath the skyline and peeks through the trees that toss it back and forth, and forth and back?
What wonderful magic the dark sky plays on the watchful eyes of a child, sitting and connecting the stars into heroes and villains and damsels.
While grass collects the dew between his fingers and sticks to the toes of a girl as she chases the lightning bugs that bring the stars so much closer to us.
Sarah Martin, 2003
There are a lot of fun activities you can do when studying the moon. One would be to make a soft dough in a round pan and drop different kinds of pebbles onto the surface, noting the formation of craters. You can learn the phases of the moon with chocolate sandwich cookies by scraping away parts of the cream and their names – gibbous is such a fun word!
I hope you find lots of ways to learn about the moon and I hope these books help!
Disclaimer:This site uses some affiliate links. This costs you nothing, but helps supplement our homeschooling costs. Thank you for your support!
One of the best parts of Autumn is all the beautiful colors that spread out across the trees. It is fascinating how each tree has its own coloration and how it closely matches the colors of the leaves when they first emerge in the spring.
You may find a free printable of my list of 25 books on – again for FREE. 🙂
If you want to skip the download, you can find the list on both or
I do have a love/hate relationship with trees. I love seeing the new leaves in the Spring, but my allergies go crazy at the same time. And then when the leaves are falling, my ragweed allergy is off the chart (along with other end-of-season pollen). But, I still enjoy looking at and learning about all the trees and my latest fascination has been the mutualism between the trees and the plethora of creatures depending on them. Birds, insects, mammals, and even the fungi and worms and other plants are so interconnected that it makes me want to plant my whole yard with native tree species (actually, I grew pawpaw trees this year from seed and am just about ready to put three into the ground. Zebra swallowtails, here we come!)
Some great activities we’ve done with the kids is to go on a scavenger hunt to identify trees, categorizing them into native, non-native, and invasive. You can collect leaves, where allowed, press them and seal them in a journal with wax paper, or make rubbings or illustrations of the trees and leaves with notes about the types – probably for older elementary and up.
I hope you get out and enjoy the changing leaves and learn more about the trees around you! And go read some great books!
Disclaimer:This site uses some affiliate links. This costs you nothing, but helps supplement our homeschooling costs. Thank you for your support!
