Pumpkin Day

Pumpkin day was a success!  A visit from an architect, an extended art class, and a class request for pattern day made the day even more fun!  Ms. Nasser reminded us that the day was perfect for Pumpkin Day because the architect, Megan Carriere, was there to talk about patterns in architecture and pumpkins are covered with lines - a type of pattern!  The day was still filled with many pumpkin activities.

Check out the fun we had!

We read to pumpkins in the Reading Patch.  The children were SO excited to read to the pumpkins!!

We read about the pumpkin life cycle, played pumpkin life cycle war, and matched rhyming pumpkins.

We also sorted pictures that start and do not with the letter p, practiced ordering numbers to 20, and even wrote pumpkin stories!

The children were very excited for the end of the day when they got to travel to four investigation stations that parent volunteers facilitated.

Children counted the number of lines on their pumpkins and remembered to use smart counting strategies and they determined if pumpkins sink or float.  Some students were very surprised that their heavy pumpkins float!

These hard working mathematicians also measured the height of their pumpkins with cubes and had the opportunity to feel the gooey inside of a pumpkin and count its seeds.

To count all the seeds, Mrs. Way had the children each grab a handful and put a group of ten seeds in each small cup.  We arranged the cups of seeds into ten frames so we could practice counting by tens to 100 and then from there counted by hundreds and the leftover tens and ones.  The total number of seeds for our pumpkin was 354!!  

Thank you to family members who shared your seed estimates with the class.  We enjoyed reading the comments!

Thank you to Mrs. Cammarata, Mrs. O'Leary, Mrs. Way, and Emily's Grandfather for helping with this fun activity!  Also, thank you to the Grella family for donating a couple of the pumpkins.

After Pumpkin Day, we used our new knowledge to compare apples and pumpkins in a Venn diagram.

We finished up our pumpkin unit by reviewing what we already knew about pumpkins prior to the start of our unit and what we were hoping to learn.

The children were surprised with how much they learned about pumpkins.  Congratulate your pumpkin experts on the new knowledge they attained and have been eager to share.