October is the perfect month to work with pumpkins! During the month of October myself and my coworkers planned Pumpkin Days to share with two local elementary schools. We discussed lessons and strategies to allow the youth the opportunity to learn, play, and explore as many pumpkin related things as possible during their time with us. For both schools we set up rotations for the students to visit each station we had set up. One station was a fun and games stop where they were able to participate in pumpkin bowling and ring toss. Another station the students visited was learning all about nutrition with pumpkins from our NEP Assistant. A third station to visit was exploring the insides of the pumpkin with pumpkin dissection as well as seed tasting. A fourth station was picking out a pumpkin from the "patch". We were able to work with a community partner, a local farmer, who donated more than 600 small pumpkins for the youth to take home! Since field trips were limited this year, schools were not visiting traditional pumpkin patches, so we were able to bring the experience to them. The final station that the students rotated through was learning about growing pumpkins, planting seeds, and the life cycle of pumpkins. We saw more than 600 students through our stations! Teachers and students alike enjoyed their time learning all about pumpkins! One student said to me "Planting the seed in the dirt made me feel calm."