Day 25: Pumpkin Day!

October 27, 2015

Today was Pumpkin Day in first grade!! The whole afternoon was filled with pumpkin stations. The students began by "picking" their own pumpkin (off of the carpet not from a patch). The class was then broke up into 3 groups. We made sure to mix up the groups up from their everyday reading groups. This gave the students the ability to work with a different set of peers. There were 3 stations the students rotated between. They were all math and science related.

At the first station there was a pumpkin cut open. Each student made a prediction of how many seeds were going to be inside. They as a class then counted all of the seeds. Each student counted seeds into groups of ten and put each group into a plastic cup. After all three groups went through we counted the cups by tens to get the total number.

At the second station students began by predicting if their pumpkin would sink or float. I thought that everyone would predict their pumpkin would sink, however there was a good mixture of answers. We had a container of water on the table and each student took a turn placing their pumpkin in. A lot of them were surprised when their "heavy" pumpkin floated on the top. The second portion of this station was weighing their pumpkin. Each kid weighed them self on the scale, then weighed them self again while holding their pumpkin. Using subtraction they found the weight of their pumpkins.

The final station was all about measurement. Students measured the height of their pumpkin using cubes, and measured the circumference using yarn and a yard stick. They then went into the hall and made a prediction about their pumpkin rolling in a straight line or not. Everyone then got the opportunity to roll their pumpkin and mark how far it went with masking tape. They were all very engaged in this and enjoyed the "competition" aspect of who's pumpkin rolled the furthest.

After all the stations were complete everyone got to paint their pumpkin. This was a great conclusion to Pumpkin Day and it was fun to see how each student's pumpkin was decorated differently.