by 
October's Child-led Sensory Challenge is a Pumpkin! I knew this was going to be interesting for us since I avoid cutting open pumpkins because. Cannot stand their gooey insides. But this was child led, so I figured I could cut the top off and let them go for it.
They were super excited to take the top off the pumpkin and see all the seeds and ick inside. If all we were doing was observing they would have loved it, but then I told them to go ahead and stick their hands in it.
Hahahaha....I was met with "it smells like stinky cheese" by the 3 year old who I am pretty sure has never smelled stinky cheese and "it's too slimy" by the 7 year old. Ok, good to know my feelings about pumpkin guts are shared by my kids, and they are not missing out when we don't carve pumpkins!
After staring at it for a while they decided to approach it with shovels and spoons.
Then they decided the opening wasn't big enough for them all, so they tried cutting it with a spoon. They probably would have made it if I had let them try long enough (although we may still be out there), but I rescued them with a knife. Now they could all dig in the pumpkin!
They succeeded in digging out pretty big chunks of the flesh as well as all the seeds!
After the pumpkin was pretty well demolished all over the driveway, they were done. I was excited we finally found a sensory activity that doesn't require vehicles or ponies to be added! Then the girls collected a bunch of the seeds that they wanted to try to plant; hopefully we remember them in the spring!
To read more about the Child-led Sensory Bin Challenges head over to Little Bins for Little Hands!
To see how my kids reacted to the other challenges we participated in; visit the links below:
How do your kids react to pumpkin guts? Are there any other textures that bother them?
.jpg)
.jpg)
