Category Archives: Pumpkin
Pumpkins
We went on a field trip to the pumpkin patch and apple orchard a few weeks ago and when we came back, we spent some time learning more about our pumpkin:
After we scooped out the seeds and counted them (501!!), we counted the number of lines on the outside of the pumpkin. I wrote on my pumpkin using a dry erase marker. We can erase the lines and draw on the outside if we want to or write facts about our pumpkin on it. 🙂
This is our Pumpkin Investigation that we completed while we were learning more about it. You might see that the “How many seeds?” section it says 400 seeds. We actually had 501 seeds, but 400 was our estimate by looking inside. We went back and stuck a post-it note over 400 and changed it. 
The children learned about the life cycle while we were at the pumpkin patch so we created it in our science notebooks. They first colored the pictures and then glued them in the cycle to show their understanding. 
I also introduced another new math game that is helping us work on subtraction. The children begin with 5 pumpkins on each larger pumpkin. They roll the die to determine how many to take away from the 5. They write the total number left on the large pumpkin and move on to the next pumpkin.
Kristen 🙂
Pumpkin Investigation #2
We also created these two charts to help us learn more about our pumpkin. I find that at this point in the year, we do more of our science notebooking as a whole group and every once in a while, we will put something in our actual notebook. In January, we will really get going on the children creating their own graphic organizers for their notebooks.
I found this chart on Pinterest and decided it was just what we needed! My only suggestion would be to not push yourself to finish it all in one day–this is all we got done in one sitting–my kids liked to discuss what each word meant. 😉
This song was another idea I found on Pinterest. I loved the song and many of the words we listed on the chart above, we used on the post-it-notes for this song. The kids loved this song and I heard them singing it throughout the next few days. 🙂
Kristen 🙂
Pumpkin Investigation
The last week of October, we had some pumpkin investigating going on and here are a few of the activities we did:
First, we asked the children to tell us if they thought the mini pumpkins would sink or float. They made their predictions by placing a sticker either above or below the water line. Then we tried it and talked about why it floated. 
After that, some one asked if a carved pumpkin would sink or float, so I hollowed out a tiny pumpkin (tough to do!!) and then we predicted again–it floated. We talked about density and the air in the walls of the pumpkin and then we tried floating an apple–it floated!
Kristen 🙂
Pumpkin Parts
We spent time time last week learning about pumpkins in preparation for our pumpkin patch field trip (which we had to cancel due to rain), but we had fun anyway. I found this cute pumpkin parts diagram and decided that we would first create an anchor chart version:
We talked about how this is a cross section of a pumpkin and what lives inside the pumpkin. The kids were surprised to learn that a pumpkin had a brain just like they do!
We then glued their version into their science notebooks:
This week, we will crack the pumpkin open (the one I bought!) and compare the pictures (and some other fun things!)
Kristen 🙂
Weight Watchers
This post is totally unrelated to anything having to do with school–although, these would make a nice treat for breakfast or an afternoon snack after school!
I found this recipe on Pinterest for Weight Watchers muffins and decided to try them–they are supposed to be 1 point each. I made them today and they are GOOD!! You cannot taste the pumpkin AT ALL! I’m not a big pumpkin fan, but you wouldn’t know it was in these muffins. You just replace the oil, water, and egg with the pumpkin and you’re set! They do bake up a little funny because they are dense (as the recipe says), so they will look odd, but things don’t have to look cute to taste good right?
You can click here to get the recipe. 🙂
Try them!
Kristen 🙂
New Dollar Tree Finds
Between assigning everyone to swaps, I did manage to get out yesterday and hit up the Dollar Tree. Look what I found:
Foam Blocks!!! Now I know this isn’t earth shattering or anything, but guess what I saw when I looked at them??
DICE!! That make no noise when you roll them because they are foam.
What’s a girl to do??? (Buy 4 packages!)
How about this:
or this:
or even this:
I’ve linked up all these ideas to my Pinterest boards if you’d like to learn more about them. 🙂
What would you do with yours?
Kristen 🙂
Spiders 2009
After learning about bats, we moved on to learning about spiders. During the week, we:
-read our National Geographic for Kids magazine about “Web Weavers” (October 2009 issue)
– created a spider web on the floor of our classroom using numbers to know where to roll the “silky thread” to next
-read several Big Books about spiders (one was by Melvin Berger-you can check last year’s spider posts to see specifics)
-played Halloween Phonics BINGO
-we also estimated the circumference of our pumpkin (because we didn’t get to it before)
-had our Fall Party and made cute bat and spider crafts and played a fun game with some spooky “eyeballs” (ping pong balls that were decorated to look like eyes–it was so cool!!)
Here are some pictures:
We are lucky enough to have a color copy machine, so I made several copies of the BINGO boards so everyone could play. You spin the spinner that comes with the game and the children look for words that start with a specific letter. I got this game from the Scholastic book order several years ago.
Donors Choose Grant
I am so excited to share that our classroom was the reciepient of yet another grant through Donors Choose!! We got a new camera through a grant we wrote. Our old classroom camera had to be smacked against your hand in order to be able to see the picture on the tiny screen. I purchased the camera about 7 years ago, so I guess it had a good happy life!! It was difficult to figure out how to take a picture to send in our thank you package! The class finally decided that we would take some photos of things we do everyday so that we could share them with you and their parents through this blog!
P.S. These are pictures of our current Literacy Work Stations–let me know if you have any questions! 😉
Pumpkins Day #1-#3
We’ve been learning and reading all about Pumpkins this week…even though I was out 2 days this week (my son was sick). We started off the week by taking a picture walk through the Big Book Pumpkin, Pumpkin by Jeanne Titherington. Then the children heard the story read aloud. On the second day, the children re-read the story and then re-told the story using their own words. Today, we looked at the pictures to help us re-tell the story and then we played Guess The Covered Word. I covered the words pumpkin, seeds, pulp, flower, and sprouts. We would read the sentence and when we got to a covered word, we would try to guess what the word was. If the first letter was correct, we sounded out the word we thought it might be and would figure out if it fit. If not, we needed a new word.
Then later in the afternoon, we cut open our pumpkin and checked out the insides. I scooped out the pulp, we observed it and I put it in a plastic baggie to take home and roast the seeds. We also have a few smaller pumpkins in our room that were donated by parents (THANK YOU!!!) so we could observe them. And observe them we did and wrote our findings down on our KOWL chart.
Kristen 🙂
Kristen's Kindergarten 