(upbeat music) - Hello, little learners.

Welcome back to our pre-K and TK classroom.

I'm your teacher.

Mrs. Lara.

Can you tell me your name?

Oh, I'm so glad that you're here today.

Let me see if I can guess your special letter.

I have my board here.

So you told me your name and your special letter is the first letter of your name.

So is it hmm, big line, big curve letter D maybe?

Yes, no?

Don't worry if I didn't guess it this time, I'll make sure to guess it next time.

Now, today is day three of the five days that we're gonna be together this week.

So let me add a magnet here.

One, two, three days, and we have two more days left where we're gonna be studying pumpkins.

Are you seeing pumpkins all around you?

I went to the grocery store last night and I saw a big box full of big orange pumpkins.

So I thought it would be a good time for us to investigate pumpkins.

We're gonna read some books and do some painting today.

So I hope you stick around for the whole episode.

Now we're gonna start off with our finger play and remember, we're gonna need our five little pumpkins, so your fingers.

One, two, three, four, five.

A really big fat pumpkin on the end, called your thumb.

Then we're gonna need your gate and we're gonna put our pumpkins on our gate.

Are you ready?

Hey, five little pumpkin 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."

And the fifth one said, "I'm ready for some fun."

Ready with your spooky face?

Here we go.

Ooh went the wind and out with the light and the five little pumpkin's rolled and rolled and rolled out of sight.

Oh, I hope you liked that one.

Now I think it's time for us to do our letter with Miss Maria.

(doorbell chimes) That always gives us clues about the book that she delivered.

So let's do our letter.

Now doing our letter helps us learn to track and figure out where to put our pointer finger when we read.

Now, you'll remember, this is the left.

And when we read we slide to the right, so let's sing our song.

♪ When I read books ♪ ♪ I read left to right ♪ ♪ Left to right ♪ ♪ Left to right ♪ ♪ When I read books ♪ ♪ I read left to right ♪ ♪ That helps me be a strong reader ♪ Let's see our letter and what it says.

Dear Miss Lara, have you read the book "Too Many Pumpkins"?

"Too Many Pumpkins"?

I have not read the book.

Have you?

I think I've seen it though at the bookstore.

Hmm.

It is about me, Rebecca Estelle, a woman who hates pumpkins.

She hates pumpkins.

Oh no.

That's what we're learning about this week.

I wonder if Miss Maria left me that book to read.

I'm scared to read it.

Hating pumpkin's oh.

Oh Rebecca Estelle, we'll see.

So here is that book.

It's called "Too Many Pumpkins".

And I know that because that's the name of the book or the title of the book.

It's in big letters and the author is Linda White.

You'll remember the author is the one that writes the words.

It's illustrated by Megan Lloyd and the illustrator draws the pictures.

So we're gonna read the book "Too Many Pumpkins".

Now I'm gonna give you a warning.

This is a little bit of a long book.

So grab a little book buddy, a little stuffy that you have and nestle in and we'll read this book together.

Here we go.

Every year at spring time, Rebecca Estelle planted just enough seeds in her garden to grow vegetables for the long winter.

She planted carrots and beans, tomatoes and peas, corn and rutabagas.

She grew a little bit of everything, except pumpkin's.

There she is in her garden.

Rebecca Estelle hated pumpkins!

When she was a little girl, money had been scarce.

Now scarce is a word that means there's not a lot of it.

So when someone says money is scarce, that means she grew up with not a lot of money.

For an entire month, all there had been to eat were pumpkins.

Baked pumpkins, steamed pumpkins, boiled pumpkins, stewed pumpkins, mashed pumpkins, rotting pumpkins, breakfast pumpkins, lunch pumpkins, dinner pumpkins, enough pumpkins.

Rebecca Estelle decided she would never, ever, ever eat pumpkin's again, or even look at another pumpkin ever.

And she didn't until...

So let's look at the pages.

What do you think is gonna happen in the story?

So we see Rebecca Estelle here, and there's a truck carrying pumpkins, but it looks like the truck overflowed.

I wonder what's going to happen?

One autumn day, long after Rebecca Estelle's hair had turned snowy white, she was raking the leaves that fell each fall from her black walnut tree.

And her cat Esmeralda was scattering them just as quickly, all of a sudden the pumpkin truck passed by.

Oh, she heard it coming vroom, beep, beep.

And she knew what it was.

It rumbled by at harvest time every year.

She turned her back and concentrated on picking up the fallen leaves.

She managed to ignore the truck until...

So I don't know if you can see, but on her face, her eyebrows are really close together.

She seems frustrated or annoyed with the truck.

Remember she hates pumpkins.

Splat!

An enormous pumpkin tumbled out the truck and smashed into slimy orange smithereens all over the edge of her yard.

"Come back here and this pumpkin!"

she yelled, but the driver sped away.

Look at her face, she is so astonished, that pumpkin exploded in her yard.

Now I want you to make a prediction.

What do you think is gonna happen?

Rebecca still hates pumpkins and now one has landed on her yard.

Look at the cat up here.

Scaredy cat.

So scared.

"Well, I won't touch it."

Rebecca Estelle insisted getting her shovel from the barn "And I won't look at it.

I won't think about the pumpkin again."

She declared and she didn't until... Oh no.

Look it, look at this is where the pumpkin landed.

What's happened to the pumpkin?

It's growing.

Let's see what she does.

Until spring when Rebecca stele was admiring the new sprouts in her garden, she noticed Esmeralda the cat playing in some big green leaves growing at the edge of the yard.

"How curious."

She said going over to inspect them.

I didn't plant anything there.

Now what do you think those are?

Then Rebecca Estelle remembered the pumpkin truck and the slimy pumpkin smithereens.

"Pumpkins!"

She cried in disgust.

"Come out of there Esmeralda.

I will not water those plants."

I will not tend them.

I will ignore them and they will die."

So there she is with Esmeralda picking up the cat saying, "Don't go near the pumpkin."

She trampled to the barn, got her garden tools and went to work on the pumpkin vines.

She cut and dug until not one was left growing.

"There!

Now there will be no more pumpkin."

She smiled and she returned to her garden.

So there she is getting her basket full of vegetables and fruits.

Rebecca Estelle ignored the vines so well that she forgot why she wasn't using the front door until Esmeralda went to rake the leaves that fell each fall from the black walnut tree in front of the house.

So her and Esmeralda went.

So there's Esmeralda and what is she going find?

But, oh no look, what happened to the seeds and the vines?

They grew all over.

How do you think Rebecca Estelle's gonna react?

Remember, she hates pumpkins.

"Pumpkins!"

Rebecca Estelle shrieked.

Pumpkin vines had twirled under the bushes, over the bird bath through the porch rails and onto the rocking chair.

The entire yard was a sea of plump round pumpkins.

"Too many pumpkins!"

She told Esmeralda.

What is she gonna do with all these pumpkins?

"Well," said, Rebecca Estelle.

"I can't let the pumpkin stay here.

Some people might need these pumpkins.

And I suppose there are folks crazy enough to like them.

We'll give them a way."

So she marched off to get her wheelbarrow.

Rebecca Estelle struggled to lift the first pumpkin, then the second and then the third.

She huffed and she puffed as she wheeled the loaded wheelbarrow into the lane.

"I'm too tired to deliver these heavy pumpkins now."

Rebecca Estelle grumbled.

She mopped in her brow in her apron and wondered what to do next.

"Perhaps if I make them into pies, they will be easier to deliver."

Look at the pictures.

What do you think happened in the story?

It looks like the pumpkins were too heavy.

So Rebecca Estelle had the idea to turn them into pies.

So she went to work.

She scooped out the slimy seeds of the pumpkins and cut away the shells.

And after she boiled the pumpkin meat, she mixed it with eggs and milk and sugar and flour and cinnamon, nutmeg and cloves to make rich pies and bread and cookies.

There she is, working very hard in her kitchen.

Pumpkin dishes spilled out of every cupboard drawer and cubby hole and the seeds were mounting in the corner.

"Well, that's the first batch."

Rebecca Estelle said, dusting her flowery hands.

"Now to deliver them."

She put the wheat in the wheelbarrow outside the kitchen door, the loaded it with pumpkin treats and it was full.

She thought of delivering all the pumpkin dishes all in her neighborhood.

Next, she took her knife and sat in the middle of the pumpkin patch.

She carved a smiling face on a nice round pumpkin, a scary snaggletooth face on a top thin pumpkin and boo on a short squat pumpkin.

"If this doesn't get people to come back here, we'll have to deliver them all ourselves."

She said about delivering the pumpkin treats.

So there she is carving pumpkins.

(chuckles) And look at all the pumpkins that she carved.

Rebecca Estelle peered into the darkness for a long time.

She didn't see anything.

Still, she watched until finally she saw light faint at first, then brighter and then more lights bobbing through the night.

"Here they come!"

She shouted.

"Esmeralda!

Let's heat up some apple cider."

So you can see really distant over here there's some lights And I think they're coming to get their treats.

And look, young and old, everyone in Midtown came to get some pumpkin treats from Miss Rebecca Estelle, the woman who hated pumpkins.

Look, there she is with Esmeralda on her rocking chair.

Look, she took a handful of seeds at the end.

She tucked them snugly into her pocket where they would be safe again until planting them next spring.

So what did you think of the story "Too Many Pumpkins"?

At the end I think Miss Rebecca Estelle changed her mind, didn't she?

She didn't like pumpkins, but then at the end she saved the seeds like she was gonna plant some more later.

So I hope that you check out this book, if you want to read it over and over again, like I do with my books.

At the library or on the Sora app.

So right now we're gonna work on one of our foundational skills at our grade level in pre-K and TK, which is a rhyming.

That's right.

In our book, there weren't too many rhyming words and not too many words rhyme with pumpkin.

So I thought we would do a rhyming matching game here on our board.

So let's see, we have two seeds that match, two pumpkin seeds that match.

Let's see.

♪ Can you find the rhyming words ♪ ♪ The rhyming words ♪ ♪ The rhyming words ♪ ♪ Can we find the rhyming words ♪ ♪ They're words that sound the same ♪ So let's take a look and see if we can find rhyming words.

Let's see there's red.

Hmm.

What other seed rhymes with red?

We have bread and pie.

Which one rhymes read bread or red pie?

Red, bread.

♪ Red and bread are rhyming words ♪ ♪ Are rhyming words ♪ ♪ Are rhyming words ♪ ♪ Red and bread are rhyming words ♪ ♪ They sound the same at the end ♪ All right.

Let's see.

We have some more.

We have a bow.

Hmm, what rhymes with bow?

Is it bat or scarecrow?

Which one sounds the same at the end?

Bow bat, or bow scarecrow?

Oh, bow scarecrow.

That's right.

These are our rhyming words.

We're gonna put them right over here.

Let's do a few more before moving to our project place.

How about mouse?

Tree or house?

Which one sounds the same at the end?

Mouse tree or mouse house?

Mouse house.

That's right.

♪ Mouse and house are rhyming words ♪ ♪ They're rhyming words ♪ ♪ They're rhyming words ♪ ♪ Mouse and house are rhyming words ♪ ♪ They sound the same at the end ♪ Maybe we'll do a few more.

How about bat and vine?

Do they rhyme?

No.

How about bat and hat?

Do they sound the same?

They do.

We'll put those together.

Alright.

Now let's see.

How about this one?

Vine.

Vine and pie.

Vine and pie.

No, it doesn't sound the same.

How about vine and nine?

Yes, that sounds the same.

Okay.

So I hope that you practice your rhyming words at home as well because those help us distinguish the sounds in words.

So right now we're gonna go over to our project place.

We're gonna do a little bit of painting.

We're gonna paint "Too Many Pumpkins".

So let's walk over here and I'll tell you the materials that you'll need.

So for this activity, you're going to need a piece of white paper and some paints.

Now I decided that I'm going to mix my own orange color.

So I got some primary colors, blue, red, and yellow.

And then I wanted to add a stem.

So I brought some brown paint.

And you're gonna need a paintbrush, maybe some cups to hold some paint for your mixing.

And you're gonna need your hands, actually your knuckles, because that's what we're gonna use to make our pumpkins.

So, first thing we're gonna do is mix up our colors.

Now what two colors might I add together to get orange?

Think.

Do you remember from yesterday?

That's right.

Red and yellow.

Let's add some red.

Now, remember my little tip, add more yellow than you do red.

And if you have hot pink and yellow, that makes an even prettier orange color.

I should have brought some to show you today.

All right, I added some yellow.

Now the best part is mixing it all up.

I'm gonna mix it and you're gonna see a bright orange color.

Isn't it amazing how you can get different colors from just three primary colors?

Okay.

The next step to painting our "Too Many Pumpkins" on our paper is we're actually going to paint our fist or our knuckles right here.

If you notice just in a pumpkin look right here, you're gonna see ridges like that.

And when you notice kind of here, it has the same ridges.

So we're gonna see if we can get a pumpkin shape.

So here we go.

This part's always fun because the paint brush tickles right on your hand.

(giggles) And then, you're gonna have to like Hulk smash it down into your paper.

Ooh, let's see if we can do one more.

Okay.

Here's what my pumpkins are looking like so far.

But I said we're making "Too Many Pumpkins", so let's make a few more.

I added a bit too much paint on the first one.

So I'm going to take it easy with the paint on this one.

And that's just how it goes sometimes, you have to experiment and try and then try and try again until you get it just right.

Alright.

Let's see.

Oh, there we go.

Now it's looking more like a pumpkin right here.

Let's do a couple more and then I'll show you how we're gonna add the leaves and the stem.

Now something like this would be really nice to make, to kind of celebrate the season fall and seeing pumpkins everywhere.

And don't forget grandparents.

What I might do with this, if I was a parent and I wanted to give a gift is I would have my child make these for me and either use them as thank you notes or as a background to a picture that I put.

So maybe I might make a ton of these and then put their picture here in the corner so I can remember it.

I'm gonna do one more over here, so it's a little bit balanced.

Okay.

Here we go.

One pumpkin.

My favorite part is smashing my fist into the paper.

It feels squishy.

Okay.

So what are we thinking?

Is it too many pumpkins?

I think so.

So now we have to make the stem.

So this is a really fun part too, because we're gonna use our thumb.

Now, do you remember what color the stems are on a pumpkin?

Let's take a look.

Our pumpkin here, it's kind of green, isn't it?

So we're again gonna mix two of our primary colors to make green.

So we're gonna mix yellow.

Again, we want more yellow because blue, the other color we're gonna mix is a dominant color.

We're gonna mix that all up.

I'm actually gonna use my same brush here and we're just gonna mix it up.

And there's the green I'll show you in just a minute.

Ooh, it's looking very green.

Look at that.

See, and now what we're gonna do is we're gonna paint our thumb because our thumb is gonna be the stem.

So here goes your thumb.

Ooh.

And we're gonna put it right on there.

So let me show you what it looks like when I put the stem on.

What do we think?

There's our first one.

Then you get to go through and put your thumb print on all of them.

Now, did you know that your thumb has a unique print?

That means no one else has the same print on your thumb.

You ever notice swirls on it?

If you take a close look at your thumb, you're gonna notice some swirls and different things and no one in the whole world has the same swirl pattern as you.

Isn't that incredible?

All right here, this is what our pumpkins are looking like.

And now if you wanted to go through, you can add a little bit of vine.

So get a little bit more paint on your finger and just kind of curl it up like that.

And that can be your vine.

And that'll be the last thing that we do together making our too many pumpkin art.

So what did you think?

Did you like that story of Rebecca Estelle?

I know that's a little bit of a longer one, but I liked that story because she ended up liking pumpkins at the very end.

And it's true what she says, sometimes too much of something can make you not like it, huh?

All right.

I have a few books here that I wanted to recommend and leave you with before I say goodbye.

Let me just add my last vines here.

Here we go.

And of course you always leave me with messy hands.

That's a sign we had fun, huh?

All right.

Here is what our pumpkins are looking like.

You can frame this up, put it your fridge, share it.

And then don't forget when someone sees this art, tell them it's all about that book I read with Miss Lara, "Too Many Pumpkins", about Rebecca Estelle who hated, hated pumpkins.

Now I'm gonna leave you with a few book recommendations.

I thought you boys and girls would really enjoy this book, "10 Spooky Pumpkins".

It's a counting game with math and it has really vivid pictures that are not too scary, I'll show you some.

Look at the moon peering out of the sky.

Ooh, I can't leave you with the then, I got to show you one full moon rose.

So you can see the different pictures that they have here.

And they're kind of funny.

Great pictures of skeletons, not too scary.

So if you'd like to check out more books about pumpkins, this is a good one.

And of course, don't forget to revisit our non-fiction book.

Meaning the book that has true facts about pumpkins, "From Seed to Pumpkin".

And I like this one because it goes through the whole pumpkin life cycle.

And tomorrow we're gonna read a book that has real pictures of pumpkins and revisit the pumpkin life cycle again.

Do you remember how it goes?

Do pumpkins start off big and orange and round?

No.

Can you believe they start off as a tiny little seed?

It's amazing to watch.

So I hope that you come back then boys and girls.

Tomorrow, we're also gonna be working on our feelings.

We haven't done some work on our emotions lately.

So I thought for our project, we would take some Play-Doh.

If you have your Play-Doh, you can play along and we would try to create jack-o-lanterns that feel different things according to the cards I pull out.

So until I see you tomorrow for some more fun, here's your big smooch, mwah!

Come back then.

Goodbye.

(upbeat music)