Orange Pumpkin Counting and Carrot Peeling

I found these cute little plastic pumpkins in the dollar section of Target along with an orange pail.  I had no idea what I wanted to do with them, but I knew I had to have them.  I scattered them on the kitchen counter in front of the little monkeys.

As you can tell from this site, I'm a huge fan of play-based learning...or learning in disguise.  This game practiced their numbers and addition.  While I made breakfast, they counted their pumpkins and dropped them in the pail:

Then they would dump the pumpkins out and start all over again:

In following with our orange foods yesterday, I closely supervised Monkey J as he peeled his very first carrot:

He surprised me by devouring the whole carrot, pausing only a couple of times to say, "What's up Doc?!"

Learning is healthy in so many ways!