1st and 2nd Grade Texture Pumpkins

The 2nd graders studied the life cycle of the pumpkin to tie in with both a story in their reading book and also the 2nd grade science core.

One of my favorite things about the Fall season is drawing pumpkins. It is our first real lesson in observational drawing. As part of the lesson I bought seven real pumpkins so that each group of children would have a pumpkin close enough to enable each child to be able to touch and explore the pumpkin. We find the blossom end, and feel the stems, the ribs and bumps. We look for interesting details on each pumpkin that might be fun to draw. We had fun learning how to draw with a fine permanent marker. If the student makes a mistake, they have to figure out a way to incorporate it into the overall picture. Once we drew the basic pumpkin, we added some fun pattern to mimic shading and add texture to our design. Some of the children added faces by drawing simple shapes and then filling the shapes with pattern. After the children finished drawing their pumpkin, they painted them with watercolors. This a a charming project and one of our favorites!

While the 2nd graders were using sharpies, the 1st grade classes were doing a similar project with oil pastels. This project is really fun! I used to do it with kindergarten classes, but I feel like it lends itself a little better to first grade, so I took a few years off and reintroduced it this year. In this lesson we talked about line, shape, texture, pattern and color!

We drew the basic outline of the pumpkin and then colored each section a different color and added pattern and texture. The tendency for this age group is to draw a symbolic pumpkin with a circle and a square little stem so our main goal for this project was to create pumpkins with interesting shapes and realistic looking stems! The pumpkin on the upper left was drawn by Mrs. Rutledge and all of the other pumpkins were created by 1st grade students.

The following pictures show two books that are great resources when teaching this lesson.

This book is a beautiful book with stunning photography showing the life cycle of the pumpkin. It is perfect for teaching with a scientific approach.

This book has whimsical illustrations showing beautiful artistic pumpkins throughout the entire book! I love this book and it ties in beautifully with this lesson.