We often celebrate harvest time and autumn at the museum by focusing some of our learning activities around pumpkins and squash.
Browse our pumpkin fact sheet, check out some historical photographs of pumpkins held in the museum’s own collection, or take part in one of our suggested hands on activities.
Activities
Decorate a pumpkin, cook our Butternut Squash Quesadilla recipe, colour in our pumpkins and squiggly squash, or host your own horticultural show complete with homemade rosettes. Let us know how you get along!
Make a Pumpkin Animal
Make an animal using a pumpkin or a squash as the body. Give your animal a name! Look at some of the pumpkin animals created by our learning participants for ideas.
Please do cook and eat the squash/pumpkin after you have photographed it – don’t just bin it!
Cooking
Watch and cookalong with our Food Learning Officer Ceri as she shows you how to make a Mexican inspired quesadilla using autumn’s finest butternut squash. For the full written out recipe click HERE.
Art
This activity comes with a colouring-in sheet and instructions on how to draw your own. It is inspired by weird, pimply, funky shaped squash, pumpkins and gourds.
You can print out the colouring-in page or colour it in digitally!
Pumpkin & Squash colouring-in sheet
Colouring-in sheet designed by Madeleine Sadler, Artist and Volunteer.
Horticulture
Here’s a colouring-in activity for a Horticultural Show. If you have got a printer at home you can print it out, colour it in and then cut out the rosette. If you don’t have a printer, you can try copying the rosette using a pencil and paper and then cut it out.
Suggestion: If you have a garden or allotment at home with vegetables, flowers or fruit you could create your own Horticultural Show or Harvest Festival with your harvest and display them. Or if you have some vegetable toys you could arrange them in a display.
Make homemade rosettes for the biggest fruits or vegetables. (The biggest isn’t always the tastiest!)