Learning centers in preschool and kindergarten can take up a good portion of the school day. The great thing about printable learning centers is that they can remain meaningful and still be easy to set up!  This is important when you want to switch out activities throughout the day and during the week.  Printable learning centers like our Pumpkin Seed Letter Matching activity keep students engaged in a fun way.

Pumpkin Seed Letter Matching

Finding pumpkin seeds has never been so mess-free!  Instead of reaching inside an ooey-gooey pumpkin for seeds (although that is fun too!), download the file below for our set of alphabet pumpkin seeds.

The printable Pumpkin Seed Letter Matching activity includes 26 pumpkin seeds with uppercase letters on them.  A recording sheet is included as well.  On this sheet, students will find a pumpkin filled with another set of alphabet pumpkin seeds.

*preschool and early kindergarten teachers are often asked why we use uppercase letters or matching letters to each other rather than upper to lower. There are many reasons, one of them being that when children are very first introduced to letters it is more appropriate to find ones that are the same before moving on to matching upper to lower (a more advanced skill) – if your child is ready for matching upper to lower, grab our pumpkin alphabet match. 

Print out the recording sheet to make copies of it for your students.  Or if you are using at home, just print as many copies as you need!

Print the alphabet pumpkin seeds.  Cut them apart on the gray dotted lines. I printed ours on cardstock to make them a little more sturdy.

My kindergartener played this letter matching activity at home, and I printed out a copy for her old preschool teacher to use too!

To set this up as a learning center, I like to put all of the alphabet pumpkin seed cards in some kind of container.  A small basket or colorful container from the dollar store would work perfectly.

Kids at the center can work together pulling out one seed at a time, identifying the letter, and then finding the matching letter on the recording sheet.

As young learners begin to understand what the letters in the alphabet look like, I like to also encourage them to use the sounds that the letters make at the same time.  So when a pumpkin seed is picked, students can also practice making the sound instead of just identifying the letter.

As each matching letter is found, color the letter in.  My kindergartener chose to color the seeds orange to make the pumpkin look more real!

Keep picking the seeds from the basket and coloring in the matching letters until all of the letters are colored in.

Ready to play? Download your own recording sheet and alphabet pumpkin seeds by clicking the yellow button below.

Then, for more pumpkin themed learning fun, hop over and grab our pumpkin math and literacy centers! 

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Nicole

Nicole is a former Kindergarten teacher who now uses her Early Childhood Education Degree in her preschool classroom! She keeps her preschoolers engaged with simple (sometimes messy!) play ideas that encourage hands-on learning.Find more about her educational activities and printables at Modern Preschool.

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