Have students use pumpkins to practice estimating. Place a large pumpkin in front of the class. Ask each student to cut a piece of string to the length they think would fit around the middle of the pumpkin. After everyone has made their estimated guess, wrap the strings around the pumpkin to see who was closest to being exactly right. Hang the strings up from smallest to largest, highlighting the ones that came the closest to being the correct length.
Introduce 5th graders to coordinate graphing. Create a pumpkin on a 9-inch by 9-inch grid. Use letters on the horizontal axis and numbers on the vertical axis. Give students the coordinates and have them plot and connect the points to recreate the pumpkin on their own pieces of grid paper.
Prepare a pumpkin cookie recipe to work on fractions. Print the iced pumpkin cookie recipe listed in Resources. Have 5th graders measure ingredients according to the recipe. Mix the dough, and then form into small balls and bake. Alternatively, have students make sugar cookie dough and then cut into pumpkin shapes with a cookie cutter. Evenly divide small candies and decorate the cookies to look like jack-o-lanterns.
Reinforce place value with pumpkin seeds and small plastic cups. Bring in a container of dried pumpkin seeds. Have students count groups of ten and separate into cups. Place a sheet of white paper or poster board on the table. Use a black marker to draw columns for thousands, hundreds, tens and ones. Have students work out math problems on the poster board by placing pumpkin seeds in the correct columns, regrouping as needed. Illustrate simple addition, moving seeds to the proper columns as the numbers dictate, or physically divide the seeds in a division problem. For example, place 27 pumpkin seeds on the table and divide by three. See how the three groups each have nine seeds. Showing the work can help students who struggle understand.