We took the pumpkins from our Pumpkin Patch dramatic centre (which is now a grocery store). Ms. Switzer sat with students and cleaned out the large pumpkin. We saved the seeds and I dyed some with food colouring (another Pinterest idea). We put out some twigs and glue as an invitation to make fall trees.
It took a while for everyone to visit the centre but this is our completed board. We glued the finished trees to a colour tile patterning activity that I got from a problem solving resource titled The Super Source (by Cuisinaire).
We also had some un-carved pumpkins left so we put them at the inquiry table. We cut the pumpkin in half and put some spoons and bowls on the table. We also set out books about pumpkins and we waited...
The children had fun digging out seeds and exploring the books.
We also put out cubes for measuring...
I put some of the leftover seeds on a plastic container to use for planting but we didn't get around to it last week. In the meantime, an interesting thing happened: the seeds began to sprout roots!! How exciting! This week, we began planting the sprouted seeds.
We also took some of the dried out seeds and put them out in the Math centre for counting and number matching.
We added some of those number sets to our Math wall.
After two weeks of playing with pumpkins we thought it might be time to ask the children what they know about pumpkins. We were AMAZED!! The students came up with so many facts:
"Pumpkins have seeds inside and squishy stuff"
"Seeds sprout roots"
"Pumpkins start out green and turn orange"
"Some pumpkins are white, green, orange, and even blue"
"Some pumpkins are big and some are small"; "Some are oval"
"You can cook pumpkins"
"You can bake it in the oven and make pumpkin pie"
"You carve a pumpkin to make a jack-o-lantern"
"You can put fire inside a jack-lantern"
"You can play with pumpkins!"
Finally, I gave them a sheet to record their thinking on their own. We wrote down what they wanted us to say.
Who knew that children could learn so much from a play-based inquiry on pumpkins...we are just flabbergasted at what the students came up with. Let's see where our plant growth leads us! Stay tuned...
Other Things Happening in FDLK:
We Have Grade 8 Reading Buddies!
Mr. Asaro's Grade 8 class has been coming to our class every Wednesday morning to read with our children. Each child has a special "buddy" who reads to him/her. It's a great way to get individual reading experience and we also get to teach the older kids how to be kind and caring to the little ones.
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