Pumpkin Centers

Our wonderful intern from Winthrop, Mrs. Miskelly, was required to teach a few lessons based on unit of her choice.  After talking, we decided it would fit best for her to do Pumpkins!  You've seen other posts from activities and food tastings we did in this unit.  The children have experienced a lot already and have learned about the life cycle of the pumpkin. 

Mrs. Miskelly allowed the children to experience a pumpkin to the fullest by carving one up!  She decided to do this under our document camera so that all the children could see what was inside. 

She encouraged them to predict and draw first what they thought the pumpkin would look like inside and just how many seeds there might be. 

Then, Mrs. Miskelly opened up the pumpkin and the crowd went WILD!

She instructed them to come up and take out a seed.  It was funny to hear how they described what the inside of the pumpkin felt like.  The funniest was, "It feels like throw-up!"

Mrs. Miskelly had also organized some great pumpkin Math Centers!  The children used the rest of our collection of pumpkins and the seeds from this one to measure and compare.

Mrs. Misenheimer helped the children cut a string for how long they thought the circumference of the pumpkin would be.  The children had to say if their string was too long, too short, or just right.



Mrs. Miskelly led a group that predicted which type of pumpkin would weight the most and the least. She numbered each pumpkin and challenged the children the predict with one would weigh the most and least.

She used the big book Pumpkin Pumpkin to further review the life cycle of the pumpkin and to help children see that the life of a pumpkin begins with a seed, and in this case, on a farm!

The children then got to work with the pictures she created on the pocket chart to put the life cycle in order.



One last lesson that tied in many important Social Studies standards was a lesson about producers and consumers.  Mrs. Miskelly really wanted the children to understand that pumpkin pie and pumpkins don't just suddenly appear at the grocery store for us to buy.  There are many other steps and people involved before that!

She got the children up and pretending to be farmers growing pumpkins!  She gave other students some money to "purchase" the pumpkins from the farmers.



With all this new understanding of producers and consumers, Mrs. Miskelly encourage the children to talk about other places that we purchase products such as cars from a dealership or clothes from the mall.  She then gave each child a matching game.  They had to match the product with the place.

 

This turned out to be a great, integrated unit!  The children not only learned about pumpkins but were engaged in math, literacy, science and social studies at the same time!