Happy Fall! Time for Literary Pumpkins!

Whenever a major, fun holiday approaches, I get really envious of my elementary and middle school counterparts who regularly incorporate fun, crafty holiday activities into their curriclum.  As a high school teacher, I often forego the "fun" task to make sure we get through all of our essential concepts, which always bums me out. This is why I was so excited to have a great, fun, high school level seasonal activity shared with me by my friend and colleague, Rick Brown, called Literary Pumpkins.  He learned of it a few years back and it has become a big hit here at San Ysidro High.

The literary pumpkin project is a great way to demonstrate understanding of a character, setting, or major plot development of a novel.  Students demonstrate immense creativity when designing their "pumpkins" (although man-made materials, gourds, and other fall seaon-related veggies and fruits ar often used for these projects). 

Once completed, pumpkins are on display in our school library, as well as local book stores,

Here's hand out with instructions and guidelines that Rick distributes to students. 

Download LiteraryPumpkinProject.doc

In the meantime, take a look at some cool pumpkins from our school and from another in Wisconsin:

Aslan

Aragog

But wait! Here are some more really cool Literary Pumpkins from Chippewa Falls Senior High School in Wisconsin! (thanks for sharing with everyone!)

Have fun with this great project for high schoolers!  I hope you all send me photos of your students' "GOURD-EOUS" (pumpkin humor!  Gotta love it!) Literary Pumpkins soon!

XOXO,

Patty

Comments

[Colleen]

brilliant ideas! Thanks Patty. I'm sharing your blog with teachers all over.