Pumpkin Activities

Thank you to the Switzer family for their generous donation to ensure each student in our class had their very own pumpkin to learn with this past week! Since we are learning how to write letters, we sent a thank you letter to the Switzers to show our appreciation.

Here we are getting our pumpkins washed to get them ready for our learning!

We have been using our pumpkins in the gym for some fun activities during phys. ed! We played some games, practices with targets and enjoyed some relays with our pumpkins. 

On Monday, we read a book called 'How Many Seeds in a Pumpkin?'

These are some cool pumpkin facts that we learned:
* That all pumpkins have different numbers of seeds.
* Pumpkins have long vines. (Ewan)
* The longer the pumpkins stay on the vine, the more seeds it gets. (Callen)
* Sometimes the smallest pumpkin can have the most seeds. (Izzy)
* All pumpkins have seeds. (Bridget)
* That big pumpkins aren't good to taste but smaller, darker ones are more sweet. (Zoe)
* Pumpkins are always fruits. (Leia)
* There are little strings to keep the seeds together. (Logan)
* Pumpkins can be big and small. (Kaden)
* Each line is a row of pumpkin seeds. (Landon)
* Vitamin A is in pumpkin seeds. (Ms. King)

Then, of course, we did some estimating with out new knowledge of pumpkins to see how many seeds we thought were in our own pumpkins. We followed up with comparing in math class with our pumpkins. We sorted our pumpkins with those in our table group of who had that tallest/shortest, heaviest/lightest and fattiest/skinniest! Who knew you could do so much math with pumpkins?

On Tuesday, we carved our pumpkins with our Grade 6/7 learning buddies! Special thanks to Mrs. Barker, Ms. Found and Ms. Thompson for coming to help with this activity. Without the support of the community, we wouldn't be able to do such things! These were some pretty cool 3D art creations! 

After we carved, we spent some time counting ALL the pumpkin seeds. Most of us found that are estimates were low but that's ok! It's all about the fun in learning! 

We also had some practice with a follow up procedural writing activity to teach others how to carve a pumpkin, in case they hadn't ever gotten a chance to do so. Thanks to our learning buddies for helping us to get all the steps in order and checking our writing for COPPSS!

Hope you enjoy your special jack-o-lanterns for Halloween!!