Pumpkins!

PUMPKINS!!!!

With Halloween coming up the students have been talking about their costumes, various spooks (ghost, goblins, black cats, bats) and PUMPKINS!  There has been a lot of interest and discussion around pumpkins, and a lot of reading and research into pumpkins, since we are in place that doesn’t have a lot of pumpkins just growing all around us!

I bought a pumpkin for us to explore—we rolled it, talked about what might be inside, how tall and heavy it was, drew pictures of it and cut it open to explore some more! Once we all realised there were seeds inside, the kiddos estimated how many they thought were inside, and counted them.  Then of course they wanted to carve a face into the side like so many of the stories we read!

Random wonderings and amazing questions and conversations were overheard:

“This pumpkin is so so heavy when you try and lift it!” “We are strong though, so we can do it!” –Dylan and Liam

“I wonder what is inside this pumpkin…grass?”  -Map

“There are seeds and yucky stuff inside….just wait until we open it!” –Ella

“Look when we roll this pumpkin it goes pretty straight, I thought it would always go to the side. That’s so weird!” –Rania

“LOOK AT ALL THE SEEDS!  What are the stringy bits? The pumpkin smells so weird.” –Aria

“How many are in there?  If we counted it would take us way too long.”  -Jasper

“If you cut out the side it turns to a jack-o-lantern like in the Big Pumpkin story.” 

-Shayne

“I am going to try and make my drawing exactly the same as our pumpkin.” –Malia

“Let’s turn it into a jack-o-lantern!  I love taking out the seeds—I can do it just with my hands because I’ve done this before!”  -Dylan

By exploring pumpkins through this kind of practical experiences, the kiddos have so many opportunities to observe, learn and construct their own knowledge and meaning with their classmates.