Five Little Pumpkins and Ordinal Numbers

Pumpkin Fun In Kindergarten...I use the song Five Little Pumpkins Sitting On A Gate by Raffi to introduce and practice ordinal numbers in math.  

Five Little Pumpkins sitting on a gate

The first one said, "Oh my, it's getting late!"

The second one said, "There are witches in the air!"

The third one said, "We don't care!"

The fourth one said, "Let's run and run and run!"

The fifth one said, "I'm ready for some fun!"
WHOOOOOO, went the wind
And out went the lights
And the five little pumpkins
Rolled out of sight!

They were so cute and giggled at seeing their friends as pumpkins!

We sing the song and act out the sequence of the story using math vocabulary for ordinal numbers.  I found these cute pumpkin masks at Michael's for 50 cents each and made the ordinal number necklaces from plastic sheet protectors.  The students loved singing and acting out the story!  When it was over, to choose new characters, I asked "Who is 5th? 3rd? 1st? OR What place is Jim?  What place is Jane?"  When a student answered correctly they got to go and get the mask/ordinal necklace from that child and it was now their turn to sing/act out the story.

One of our objectives is to order objects according to height.  So, I gave students a blank piece of white construction paper and asked them to draw the five pumpkins from the story.  “Start with a big pumpkin and make each one smaller as you go.”

Unfinished project, but you get the idea!  We still need to add the words... :)

We made a gate with brown construction paper and added the ordinal numbers to talk about the position of each pumpkin on the gate.  Later, we went back and added the words, details and practiced telling the story to a friend.  Pumpkin fun!

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