Pumpkin patch teaches students about five senses

If you’ve never seen the delight of itty-bitty students launched upon a pumpkin patch, then you haven’t lived.

Educator extraordinaire Kathi Shaw is now in her 33rd year of teaching early childhood grades and is still all smiles and warm laughter when interacting with her students. While Shaw has spent the majority of her teaching career in pre-K, she also taught kindergarten, second and third grades.

Hearing about a field trip to a local pumpkin patch, I contacted Shaw to hear about her students’ experience. Shaw is a Clovis schools alum, arriving with her parents when her father was stationed at Cannon Air Force Base. Taking a pre-teacher class at Clovis High School, she developed a passion for education and, as soon as her own children started to school, launched into her own education, getting her bachelor’s degree, followed by her master’s degree.

The field trip in question was to the local St. Bernard Farms to visit the corn maze and the pumpkin patch. Visits from most of our schools and grade levels are currently underway, a highlight at this time of year.

As with other grade level teachers, there’s much collaborative work across school sites, and Shaw shared a lesson plan written and shared by another amazing pre-K teacher at Mesa Elementary, Jennifer Montoya. The focus of the Pumpkin Patch lesson plan was using the “five senses to investigate the world around them.”

Discussing the trip beforehand, teachers covered vocabulary, and using the five senses to explore and discover sounds, sights, smells and textures. A highlight of the trip was the Pumpkin Patch Scavenger Hunt, where the kids would record the sights, sounds, smells, and so forth; for example, a pumpkin, a bale of hay, something smelly, a giant tire, an insect, a stalk of corn, and more.

Talk about palpable joy; these little ones were brimming with excitement as they explored the maze, played on a giant tractor tire, jumped on a big bouncy pillow and more. Wandering through the maze, Shaw let her students lead the way when they asked to be the leaders and delighted in their conversations about problem-solving, making predictions and decisions about which way to go and why. Shaw reported one little girl assured a man working at the farm that, “We didn’t eat any of your corn.”

When they returned to the classroom the reflections and discussions were just as rich in discussing how they’d used their five senses: “It smelled like dirt” and “It was taller than me and my dad” and “It had lots of colors” and “It was stickery” and much more.

Several student families had accompanied the class to help out, and Shaw remarked: “It’s wonderful to have our families involved with our school activities; I wish more families would take advantage of being involved with their children and school activities; the families had so much fun.”

All in all, it was a grand day with lots of learning and fall fun.

Cindy Kleyn-Kennedy is the Instructional Technology Coordinator for the Clovis Municipal Schools and can be reached at:

[email protected]