Pumpkin Bowling

I bought these cute little mini pumpkins to decorate our daycare table this month and thought of a fun way to use them in a counting game. I have one little one who is learning to count to five and another child who is working on remembering the sequence 11, 12, 13.

The first step was to save toilet paper tubes and paper towel tubes until we had collected thirteen. Then we painted them orange and let them dry. Our toddler was delighted to help cover all the tubes with orange paint.

The next step was to paint numbers on the tubes.  I used a marker and wrote the numbers on the tubes to help the younger children. They painted over my number with black paint.

We found a basket and practiced counting the tubes as we put them in the basket.  It’s amazing how many times we had a chance to count the bowling pin tubes.

I had the children count them when we were figuring out how many we needed to collect 13.  We counted them multiple times as we figured out what numbers had been painted and what one needed to be finished. The children counted them again when we tested to see if the paint was dry and then again when the basket tipped and we had to pick them all up.

Each child had a chance to count the pins and see the numbers visually as they set them up in a triangular formation.  We varied the number of pins used depending on the age of the child.

If you balance the mini pumpkin on it’s side and give it a push, it really goes fast!

The children discovered the pumpkin does not roll in a straight line so they had fun giggling as it weaved and crashed into the pins.  It was important to our toddler to have the pins fall down whenever it was his turn so we showed him how to slide the pumpkin.

Arranging the pins in a straight line makes the success rate of bowling over a pin even higher.

So does using a large ball! Every time the pins got knocked down it was another chance to practice counting and identifying the numbers on the pins.

I hope you have a rolling good time this pumpkin season!