Five Little Pumpkins Finger Puppets

Can you tell I may be just a little excited for pumpkin season this year?

Today I thought I would post one of my favorite pumpkin activities so far this season…reading the poem “Five Little Pumpkins,” complete with hand made finger puppets, to my kiddos.

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If you’ve never heard this poem, it’s super cute! It goes like this:

Five little pumpkins, sitting on a gate.

The first one said, “Oh my it’s getting late.”

The second one said, “There are witches in the air!”

The third one said, “But we don’t care.”

The fourth one said, “Let’s run and run and run.”

The fifth one said, “We’re ready for some fun.”

Ooooh went the wind. And out went the light.

And the five little pumpkins rolled out of sight!

-author unknown

My mother gave us this book last year for Halloween, and you can tell from the picture that it has been around the block a few times. This particular book is the classic poem illustrated by Dan Yaccarino. You can find it for sale here. I love the bright, colorful pictures and simple shapes in this version of the book.

While preparing for this week’s tot school activities, I decided on a whim to make some finger puppets to go along with this book. I wanted the pumpkins to match the five pictured in the illustrations so we could make the book into a matching game.

Tada!! Mission accomplished.

To create these, I used the bottom of a teacup to trace two orange circles and one black circle, all of felt, for each pumpkin. Then I freehanded faces onto five of the orange circles and then cut the small pieces out with some fabric scissors. After that was done, I sandwiched the black circle and the front orange circle (the one with the face) around a small green felt stem, and then sewed the two circles together using a straight stitch and orange thread. Next, I switched to yellow thread and did some decorative top stitching to recreate the yellow lines in the book’s illustrations. Finally, I sewed the pieces together on top of my first round of topstitching, making sure to leave a hole in the bottom for little (or big) fingers.

And there you have it! An adorable set of little pumpkins to act out your story. Be sure to point out the differences between the pumpkins (eyes, mouth shape, etc.) as you play. The facial expressions on the pumpkins are also a good way to talk about emotions!

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