Pumpkin Life Cycle (Free printable pumpkin activity)

Children love to learn about life cycles. Grab this free printable pumpkin life cycle activity to engage your children this fall.

What’s not to love? Cooler temperatures, crisp air, apple cider, and rows and rows of bright orange pumpkins?

Some of my happiest memories from teaching 2nd grade were the field trips to the pumpkin patch. Now as a parent, I’ve loved our tradition of heading to the country and visiting a pumpkin farm every October.

Pumpkin time is a natural learning opportunity for the children – once they are at the patch or spot them at the grocery store, they begin to wonder about how a pumpkin grows.

It’s an easy gateway into learning about all life cycles. Plus, teaching young children about the pumpkin life cycle can be so fun, and totally manageable with the free printable in this post.

So check out everything you need to know about the pumpkin life cycle and how to teach it to young children.

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What is the life cycle of a pumpkin?

Life cycles are the predictable stages and changes that living things go through during their lifetime.

The human life cycle begins with conception, birth, growth through childhood into maturity and reproduction. Similarly, other living things have life cycles.

Plants have a common life cycle:

seed
sprout or bud
young plant
mature plant

Pumpkins follow the life cycle of most plants:

A pumpkin seed is planted.
A sprout begins to form from the pumpkin seed.
A vine begins to grow.
Flowers grow on the vines.
Unripe, green pumpkins grow on a vine.
A mature orange pumpkin is ready to be picked.
The seeds inside the orange pumpkin begin the cycle again.

Leveraging pumpkin season during the fall is a really practical way to teach your young learner about life cycles.

Related: Halloween Printable Activities

Introducing How a Pumpkin Grows

When you decide to teach your young learners about how a pumpkin grows, I recommend you start with a picture book.

The book From Seed to Pumpkin is fantastic for introducing the pumpkin life cycle. It has engaging illustrations and simple, clear explanations.

I’ve used this book with preschoolers through 2nd graders to introduce the pumpkin vocabulary for its life cycle. Clearly teaching your young learners the vocabulary is an important part of teaching your child to read.

So grab it to read it to your child or students to explain how a pumpkin grows.

Alternatively, you can grab the printable mini-book How a Pumpkin Grows in the Pumpkin Life Cycle Worksheet Pack.

It’s available in the Printable Parents’ Shop or on Teachers Pay Teachers.

Free Printable Pumpkin Life Cycle Activity

After you’ve introduced how a pumpkin grows and explained the vocabulary, your learners will be ready for this free printable pumpkin life cycle activity.

You can grab this free hands-on pumpkin printable to use with your child or students. This printable is a free gift for email subscribers.

Just enter your name and email address. Then the pumpkin printable activity will be sent straight to your inbox!

Getting these printables sent to your email makes finding them year after year so easy. Just search for pumpkin in your email search bar.

Once you find the email, make sure to click on the button in the email. Then your pumpkin printable activity will open in the browser. If you have any trouble with printing, try to save it to your desktop and opening it that way.

This pumpkin activity is for your personal home use or individual classroom use only. If you like sharing, please send your friends and colleagues to this page.

Supplies for Free Printable Pumpkin Activity

You most likely have all the supplies you need for this printable activity. You need:

If you don’t have a laminator, a lot of people rave about the self-sealing laminating pouches.

If you’d like your child to learn about more life cycles, we really enjoy these life cycle figurines.

This set of figurines include the life cycle of:

butterfly
chicken
frog
turtle

Using these life cycle manipulatives makes learning even more hands-on. You can place them in a sensory bin in your home or at school for young learners to explore life cycles.

How to Use the Pumpkin Life Cycle Printable

It’s really simple to assemble the pumpkin life cycle printables:

Print the pumpkin printables for the activities on card stock.
Laminate if desired.
Cut out the picture circles.
Demonstrate to your students or child how to place the pumpkin pictures on the life cycle printable.
Use the numbers for younger learners and the vocabulary for older learners.

You can add the pumpkin picture circles to a sensory bin of beans and green and orange pom poms. This extends this learning activity plus builds in some important sensory play!

More Pumpkin Life Cycle Worksheets

If you enjoyed this free printable pumpkin activity, you’ll want to grab the 20+ page Pumpkin Life Cycle Activity Pack. In addition to this free pumpkin activity, it includes:

4 worksheets for sequencing and vocabulary
an 8-page mini-booklet for your students or children to color
6 colorful vocabulary posters
4 writing pages

Using these worksheets, your young learner will be able to:

correct sequence the pumpkin life cycle
use a book to retell how a pumpkin grows
identify the correct pumpkin vocabulary
write about pumpkins in a logical order

Grab these Pumpkin Life Cycle Worksheets in the Printable Parents Shop.

Or find them on Teachers Pay Teachers.

More Preschool Pumpkin Worksheets

Are you look for more preschool pumpkin worksheets? These pumpkin printables are a great mix of hands-on learning and more traditional worksheets.

They will be a sure hit with your young learners: