Welcome to pumpkin week! We're starting in the kitchen with soft, little pumpkin muffins your child can help stir, scoop and count. They're lightly sweet, just the right size for small hands and great to make ahead for the week.

Uh oh, the pumpkin is rolling away! Your little one builds a ramp, lets a small pumpkin roll down and then builds a stopper at the bottom to catch it. Can they stop the runaway pumpkin?

We've counted up to 7. Today we add one more and get 8. Eight is five fingers on one hand plus three on the other. A spider has 8 legs, and you can draw an 8 like a snowman: one circle on top of another!

Every pumpkin activity we use in one place: four snacks, four hands-on projects, four books, two talks and two free printables. For parents and caregivers of children ages 2 to 4.

Everything we use for Letter H in one place: a quick talk, an H snack, a letter game, a book and a free tracing page. For parents and caregivers of children ages 2 to 4.

Everything we use for Number 8 in one place: a quick talk, a counting snack, a counting game, a book and a free tracing page. For parents and caregivers of children ages 2 to 4.

We're ending spider week with a snack your little one builds and counts. One round food goes in the middle, and eight long pieces become the legs. Count them on, count them off and eat them up!

Spiders make webs by crossing lines of silk. People weave cloth the same way: one line goes over, the next goes under. In Ghana, in West Africa, there's a famous story that weavers learned to make beautiful kente cloth by watching a spider spin its web.

The Itsy Bitsy Spider by Iza Trapani takes the song everyone knows and keeps it going. The little spider climbs a spout, a kitchen wall, a pail, a rocking chair and a tree before she finally spins her web. It's a sing-along book kids ask for again and again.

Beep, beep! The spiders need a ride to their web. Your little one loads the number of spiders you call out into a dump truck, drives them across the room and dumps them at the web. Then they count to check the delivery.

Today's snack turns a bowl of yogurt into a spider web. Your little one squeezes berry circles onto the yogurt, then a grown-up drags a toothpick from the middle out, and a web appears like magic.

Spiders are helpers! Many spiders catch flies, mosquitoes and other bugs that eat our plants or bother us. Gardeners and farmers are happy to see them, because spiders keep pests away without any sprays.

Draw a web with a white crayon, paint over it and watch it appear! Wax and water don't mix, so the paint slides right off the crayon lines. It's a little bit of art and a little bit of magic.

Bear's Scare by Jacob Grant is a funny, gentle story about a tidy bear who is sure there's a spider in his house. It's a great pick for little ones who feel a bit unsure about spiders, and it ends with a new friendship.

Gift ideas for toddler girls ages 2 to 4: pretend play, dolls, building sets and cuddly favorites. Every pick works for any little one.

Walter's Wonderful Web by Tim Hopgood is a sweet first book about shapes. Walter the spider wants to build a web that won't blow away in the wind, so he tries a triangle, a square, a circle and more until he finds just the right one.

G is our seventh letter! It makes a /g/ sound at the start of words like goat, grapes, gorilla and guitar. To make it, open your mouth a little and make the sound in the back of your throat.

Today two or three bins become spider webs! Your little one tapes a web across the top of each bin, gives each web a letter, then pokes letter cards through the gaps into the right web. It's sorting, letter practice and a little bit of spider magic.

It's Letter G day, so snack time is all about the /g/ sound, like grapes. Your little one hears the sound again and again, builds a big G on the plate and then eats it. Grapes, green beans and goldfish crackers, here we go!

Spiders are amazing builders. Today your little one is the engineer: they stretch straws, sticks and yarn across an opening and hold it all together with playdough. Can their web hold a spider without falling down?