Knee Deep In Pumpkin Seeds and More

We have been learning a lot about pumpkins this week through books and activities.  We did a close reading of the book Let's Look! Pumpkins.  After each page was read, the children participated in a turn and talk discussion sharing what they thought that particular page was about.  Then, we shared out our new learning and wrote it on our Pumpkins Can, Have, Are chart.  Once the book was finished, we reviewed our chart.  Throughout the week, we added onto our chart after each read aloud. 

On Tuesday, the children made predictions about if a pumpkin would float or sink in water.  They drew their predictions in their science notebooks.  Then, we carried out the experiment and found the pumpkin floats, just like apples!  We then went back to our science notebooks and drew our conclusions.  The children are now wondering if pumpkin seeds would float or sink.  This will be our next experiment on Tuesday that we will do. 

On Friday, we investigated the inside of a pumpkin and took out the seeds as we wanted to know how many seeds our pumpkin had.  After reading the book How Many Seeds in a Pumpkin?, we decided counting by 10's would be the easiest.  So once the seeds were all gathered, we put them into groups of 10. Then, we counted by 10's and found there were 523 seeds in our pumpkin!  We also learned there were 22 ribs on our pumpkin.  Ask your child what (or even show you) the ribs are on a pumpkin.  If your child has a pumpkin at home, encourage him/her to count the ribs. 

The last thing the children did was to make a prediction of what would happen over time when chunks of pumpkin are placed in a container that contains dirt.  They drew their predictions in their science notebooks.  We will be observing the changes for the next several months and drawing our observations in our science notebooks.  We will keep you posted on our discoveries.