Tuesday, November 5, 2013

Pumpkin Studies, Part 2

Here a some pictures from our pumpkin investigation. The kids had the best time making various predictions about our pumpkin and then seeing how close they were to the actual measurements. Predictions included the pumpkin's height, weight, number of ribs, number of seeds, and whether the pumpkin would sink or float in water. The kids' favorite part of our investigation was seeing the pumpkin float in water! I was as shocked as they were when the pumpkin floated. Pulling seeds out of the pumpkin's wet, sticky flesh was a popular activity as well. Can you believe we counted more than 300 seeds from our small pumpkin?

Trying to estimate how much the pumpkin weighs.


The class worked in pairs to separate the pumpkin seeds from the stringy, mushy flesh.

After separating seeds from the flesh, the kids counted their seeds.
One pair had only 22 seeds. Another pair counted 54.




After we cleaned up our pumpkin the mess from our investigation, the kids estimated how many pumpkin candies were in our estimation jar. Three kids came pretty close. They estimated that there were 50 pumpkin candies, and there were 58 in the container.