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I have been on a quest to figure out different ways that I can use books in my elementary music classroom. Part of that quest has also been finding books for my elementary music classroom. I have been stalking the shelves of Marshall’s and TJ Maxx (they have a surprising amount of children’s books– for cheap!) and came across this 5 Little Pumpkins book. For years, I’ve used this rhythm in my kindergarten, first grade, and second grade elementary music lessons, so here’s my 5 Little Pumpkins Music Lesson!
I know the 5 Little Pumpkins rhyme, so of course I decided that I just had to have it.
After deliberation, I ended up doing a soundscape (my first soundscape!) along with the book.
A soundscape is basically adding noises or instruments to a book or a story.
For this soundscape, I used all simple percussion instruments that we already had. You can, of course, feel free to change any of the instruments to what you have.
To make this really easy, you can download the 5 Little Pumpkins lesson pack from my TPT shop– Becca’s Music Room! It include the lyrics, the movements, the instruments, plus fun extension activities and printables (perfect to leave for a sub!).
So, without further ado, here is the 5 Little Pumpkins lesson!
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5 Little Pumpkins Music Lesson
Materials:
5 Little Pumpkins Movements:
Here are the movements to go with the rhythm:
- 5 little pumpkins — hold up 5 fingers
- 1st one — hands to face like you’re surprised
- 2nd one — point to witches in air
- 3rd — move finger back and forth like saying no
- 4th — running arms
- 5th — point to self
- Ooo — hands across the body
- Out — clap
- 5 little pumpkins — 5 fingers
- Rolled out of sight — start at top and hands “roll” to the floor
5 Little Pumpkins Soundscape with Instruments
- Begin the lesson by reading the book 5 Little Pumpkins. Have students keep the steady beat while you read the book.
- Tell the students that you are going to add some instruments to make it more interesting. One student will play temple blocks, one will play chimes, and 5 will be on the hand drums. (We had to do this 3-4 times to get everyone through.)
- Before reading, the chimes ring and the hand drums can slide their fingers around to make noise on the head of the drums like the wind.
- Temple blocks play rhythm or beat on “5 little pumpkins sitting on a gate”
- One student plays the rhythm of the words on each pumpkin. So, for example, the first person will play the rhythm on “First one said ‘Oh my it’s getting late!”, the next person plays the next one, so on and so forth.
- All students say “Ooooh” on the wind part, and the chimes play again.
- On “out” all students hit the drum.
- Temple blocks play on “5 little pumpkins rolled out of sight”
5 Little Pumpkins Composition
Next up, have students create their own poem! We changed the lyrics of each of the 5 pumpkins.
Depending on the age of your students, you can do this whole group or small group. With younger kids, I project the slide on the board from the lesson pack and we do it together. With 2nd graders, I let them get into groups with the printable version of the composition activity and they create their own. Then they an perform them for the class!
5 Little Pumpkin Extension Activities
That’s the main portion of the lesson! As extensions, we did all pumpkin related activities. Here’s a few more things that you can do:
- Comics: Have students create a comic and illustrate the poem (included in the 5 Little Pumpkins lesson pack)
- Pumpkin composing: With the older students, you can have students create rhythmic patterns with pumpkins! Check it out here.
- Pumpkin solfa: Have students match the solfege with these matching games.
- Pass the Pumpkin: Pair with another pumpkin song! This singing game is always a HUGE hit. Click here to read how I use it and what you can do with each grade level.
So there’s your 5 Little Pumpkin music lesson! Use with prek-2.
And don’t forget to grab the lesson pack to make this even easier (because we all know that October is certainly not the easiest month to be a teacher!)
Happy teaching!
