Rhyme: Five Little Pumpkins

Learning and reciting rhymes, poems, songs and chants increases the children’s confidence in using English whilst they become accustomed to the rhythms and sounds and structures of the language.

It is Halloween and my students are reticing the following poem:

Five Little Pumpkins
Five little pumpkins sitting on a gate.
The first one said, "Oh my, it's getting late!”
The second one said, "There are witches in the air!”
The third one said, "But we don't care".
The fourth one said, "Let's run, let's run".
The fifth one said, "Isn't Halloween fun?"
Then Woooooo went the wind, and OUT went the lights.
And five little pumpkins rolled out of sight.

I think this is quite a good poem for the younger students to prepare for Halloween, not only because the children absolutely love it, but because we can work on different linguistic aspects, such as:

1. Phonics: gate/late; air/care; run/fun; lights/sight
2. Ordinal numbers 1-5
3. The use of speech marks
4. Question and exclamation marks
5. The past simple tense

You can watch and listen to the children here:

http://cp.sanjuanbautista.madrid.educa.madrid.org/etw09/5pumpk.wmv

You can get ideas and free printable "Five Little Pumpkins" material in the Children's Songs Fairy Tales & Nursery Rhymes Section in the DLTK's Growing Together Website, which I strongly recommend.
And of couse, the children will love to carve a pumpkin!!
I hope you give it a go!

(Photo from www.flickr.com, Creative Commons) Thank you!