Easy Chinese Pumpkin Activities Kids Can Do Today!

Pumpkin activities in Chinese for children - teach Chinese speaking, reading writing

Since pumpkins are the highlight of the season, we’ve been having fun learning Chinese with easy pumpkin activities and crafts! I’ll share relevant pumpkin words we learned in Chinese and English and easy Chinese learning activities that you can try.

If you don’t speak Chinese, you can adapt these concepts to your language.

pumpkin learning activities for kids Chinese speaking, reading, writing

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Important pumpkin vocabulary in Chinese, Pinyin, and English

Since I’m learning Chinese as a parent, I took notes on autumn and pumpkin-related phrases in simplified Chinese, traditional Chinese, Hanyu Pinyin, and English.

I hope this list can be helpful for other families who are studying Chinese!

  • 我很饿! / 我很餓! (Wǒ hěn è / I am so hungry!)
  • 你要吃什么? / 你要吃什麼?(Nǐ yào chī shén me? / What do you want to eat?)
  • 我要吃…(Wǒ yào chī / I want to eat….)
  • 南瓜 (Nánguā / Pumpkin, squash)
  • 南瓜派 (Nánguā pài / Pumpkin pie)
Pumpkins and gourds - silhouette matching DIY puzzle

Educational Chinese pumpkin crafts and activities

Although this time of year is extra busy with the holidays approaching, I want to make sure that my children are still able to review Chinese characters in a fun way.

You might feel the same way – who has time to teach kids Chinese when meals need to be cooked and dishes are piling up in the sink?

Well, here are easy Chinese pumpkin activities that take only minutes to prepare. I hope these ideas can be helpful for your family.

Pumpkin activities for Mandarin practice

Asian (Chinese / Korean - American) children visit a pumpkin and apple farm in the autumn season

Visit a pumpkin farm

Kicking off this list with a reminder that kids need lots of free play time to explore. Plus, natural experiences, like visiting a pumpkin patch and baking pumpkin pie, are among the best ways to teach kids how to speak Chinese.

Since I’m not fluent in Mandarin, I try to check the dictionary for relevant words that I’m not sure about before going to the farm, like 稻草人 (dàocǎorén / scarecrow) and 拖拉机 (tuōlājī / tractor).

My kids are fascinated by gourds, and they were excited to tell me that this green one below looked like 雷龙 / 雷龍 (léi lóng / brontosaurus)!

While your children touch and pick up different pumpkins, describe each color, weight, size, and texture in Chinese and encourage your kids to chime in!

My kids are fascinated by gourds, and they were excited to tell me that this green one below looked like 雷龙 / 雷龍 (léi lóng / brontosaurus)!

Bake a pumpkin pie 南瓜派 (nánguā pài)

If your family is into baking, expand your child’s Chinese vocabulary with the multi-sensory experience of baking and eating delicious homemade pie!

As you prepare the pie, describe the flavors and smells. While pouring ingredients and cutting, narrate your actions. These real-life experiences make Chinese learning relevant and meaningful.

Try this: How to Make the Switch from Dominant to Minority Language

DIY Cardboard barn and pumpkin farm

DIY cardboard barn and pumpkin farm

As my children grow up, their creativity grows. Together, we made this DIY pumpkin farm small world. This has been a fun way to re-create our favorite barn experiences at home! In this we have:

  • Cardboard box lid as the base
  • Expired dried beans
  • DIY cardboard barn made from a milk carton (inspired by Happy Tot Shelf – check out her original idea!)
  • Apple trees made from toilet paper rolls and stiff felt
  • Play dough pumpkins (easy playdough recipe in my post about play dough mooncakes)
  • Signs made from cardboard and toothpicks

Since the barns that we go to only have English signs, for pretend play, we write our signs in Chinese to normalize print in our minority language.

Here are new phrases that we learned from this activity:

  • 红谷仓 / 紅穀倉 (hóng gǔ cāng / red barn)
  • 滑动的谷仓门 / 滑動的穀倉門 (huádòng de gǔ cāng mén / sliding red barn doors)
  • 红谷仓有两扇滑动门 / 紅穀倉有兩扇滑動門 (Hóng gǔ cāng yǒu liǎng shàn huádòng mén / The red barn has 2 sliding doors)

Pumpkin-themed Chinese reading activities

Pumpkins and gourds silhouette matching

My kids are fascinated by the unique shapes of pumpkin gourds, and silhouette matching games are an easy way to create a puzzle!

With a black Sharpie and a large sheet of white paper, I trace the outline of each pumpkin shape. For Chinese character exposure, I wrote related words inside each shape.

Pumpkins and gourds - silhouette matching DIY puzzle - Easy, educational autumn and Thanksgiving activities for kids!

Since my 3-year-old son is gradually learning to memorize Chinese characters, I wrote 瓜 (guā) in each shape. At the time of this activity, since he was just learning that word, I did not write 南瓜 (nánguā). I wanted to wait to teach him the 南 Chinese character.

Related: Boost Language with 5 Fun Fruit and Veggie Garden Planting Activities for Kids

Chinese 大中小 pumpkin dot sticker activity

Tot School with Osh came up with this simple and smart dot sticker activity that teaches 大中小 (dà zhōng xiǎo / big, middle-sized, small). As a reference for the stickers, she drew a pumpkin and wrote Chinese characters in black marker.

Pumpkin field sticker Chinese word matching

Pumpkin field sticker Chinese word matching #learnchinese

After my son mastered 瓜, I felt that he was ready to learn the more complicated 南 Chinese character!

Using sheets of green scrap paper, I cut the paper into a 田 (tián / field, farm) shape as a subtle way to introduce that Chinese character. Then I drew circles and prepared dot stickers for a 南瓜 word matching game.

Because it’s important for the Chinese words to stand out, I used a black Sharpie marker to write Chinese characters on orange dot stickers.

Also, to serve as a control for knowing which way the Chinese word should be oriented, I told my son that the pumpkin stem should be at the top of the word!

Since my son has learned these words previously, we won’t be doing the exact activity. However, I thought this was a fantastic example to share and that you should adapt any of these activities to your child’s learning level.

Also, the stem that she drew in inspired me to draw it in the above pumpkin field matching activity to help my son orient the Chinese characters 南瓜.

Paper plate pumpkin pie word matching

Paper plate pumpkin pie word matching with Chinese characters - fun autumn and Thanksgiving activity for kids

Since my son has multiple food allergies and can’t eat traditional pumpkin pie, I created a pumpkin pie craft with biodegradable paper plates! This paper plate craft turned out to be a fun Chinese word-matching game.

My children painted the paper plate with mess-free tempura paint sticks; I used a black Sharpie marker to write Chinese characters on dot stickers.

Although 好吃 (hào chī / tasty) were the Chinese characters that we focused on in the above photo, you can add more to increase difficulty of the matching game.

The dot stickers enable the craft to be reusable – just remove or cover up learned words with new words!

Paper strip pumpkin craft with thankful messages in Chinese
Paper strip pumpkins and Chinese Thanksgiving banners

DIY Thankful paper strip pumpkins

Inspired by Fireflies and Mudpies, we made pumpkins from paper strips! The technique is similar to these Valentine’s Day paper lanterns that we made earlier in the year.

To boost conversation and literacy, we wrote messages of gratitude on 1 inch wide paper strips. For this activity, we used cream, orange, and green colored construction paper with a gold sharpie.

If you can’t write Chinese, feel free to use my templates with simplified or traditional Chinese gratitude phrases.

how to make a paper strip pumpkin craft

What I like about this particular design is that the paper strips can be collapsed and easily stored away as shown in the above photo.

For step-by-step instructions, please check out Fireflies and Mudpies.

Pumpkin-themed Chinese writing activities

Form words with pumpkin seeds

writing Chinese characters with pumpkin seeds - autumn Thanksgiving activity for kids

Next time that you cook pumpkins or squash, save the 种子 / 種子 zhǒngzǐ (seeds)! They are great for sensory play as well as pre-writing practice! With pumpkin seeds, my son created a few simple words, such as 子.

Write a story or journal about pumpkins

Encourage younger kids to share their pumpkin experiences by dictating a journal entry. Older kids can record their own memories in their diaries or get creative by writing stories!

More fun bilingual autumn activities for kids

4 Comments

  1. Qianwen Lu says:

    Love the activities! I will try the stickers with 南瓜 and 大中小。 Can you tell me a little more about how did you introduce the characters for your son please? Thank you Betty.

    1. Hi Qianwen! Thank you for your email! Last year, I introduced my son’s first Chinese characters through play. We started with very simple characters like 大小口 and of course 车 because he loves cars. Also introduced family members 爸妈姐弟 through this envelope surprise activity and just seeing it written very frequently since to him, these are our “names”. I try to introduce new concepts and vocabulary through the Montessori 3-period lesson. I share more about how I taught my daughter her first characters (same philosophy for my son) in this post. Please let me know if that helps!

  2. Just tried your pumpkin puzzle activity with my almost 5-year-old. Forced us to speak in Chinese for the 10 minutes we worked on it. Thank you so much.
    I need to add to our vocabulary to describe the pumpkins other than color and size. You don’t happen to have a list of words on hand do you? Bumpy? Smooth? Stripes?

    1. Hi Leidy! I’m so glad to hear that the activity was helpful for encouraging Chinese with your child! I checked with our Chinese teacher, and she offered these pumpkin descriptions in Chinese/Pinyin/English. Hope it helps!

      不光滑的南瓜 (Bù guānghuá de nánguā / Not smooth pumpkin)

      光滑的南瓜 (Guānghuá de nánguā / Smooth pumpkin)

      有条纹的南瓜 / 有條紋的南瓜 (Yǒu tiáowén de nánguā / Striped pumpkin)

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