From Pumpkin to Jack-o-Lantern!

Fall is my favorite time of year and I love all the activities we get to do in the Fall.  Here are a few more of our pumpkin activities.

We read tons of pumpkin books.    I don't know how to put the Amazon icon on here so I will just list them.

Pumpkin, Pumpkin

From Seed to Pumpkin

It's Pumpkin Time

The Runaway Pumpkin

The Littlest Pumpkin

Pumpkin Soup

Sixteen Runaway Pumpkins

Too Many Pumpkins

A Day at the Pumpkin Patch

Of course we just had to carve a pumpkin into a jack-o-lantern.  So we voted on how we wanted the eyes, nose, and mouth to look and put our data onto a Pumpkin Graph.

 

I cut open the pumpkin and all the students helped me scrape out the "guts".  (Go to my school web page to see picture of the k-crew kids)  Then I carved its face according to the graph!

     

Here he is all lit up!

After we cut open the pumpkin we talked about how it looked inside and out, how it smelled, if we had tasted pumpkin before, and what words we could use to describe the pumpkin.

Pumpkin Measurement

We have read a plethora of pumpkins books this week AND took a field trip to the pumpkin patch.   I decided we needed to do some pumpkin math too.  I got my ideas from Little Giraffes and Under the Big Top.

Circumference:  

First we discussed what circumference is and how we could find out the circumference of our pumpkin.  Next I had each student estimate how much yarn it would take to fit around the widest part of the pumpkin.  Then each student cut a piece of yarn the length of their "guesstimate".  After they cut their yarn, we tested each piece of yarn around the pumpkin and we placed the yarn on our chart to show if the guess was "too short", "too long", or "just right".  One person guessed just right!

Height: 

To measure the height, I asked the students to estimate how many cubes it would take to match the height of the pumpkin.  Then I wrote down each estimate on the chart.  Next each student tested their estimate using their cubes.  We had three people guess just right!