TBT: Pumpkin Week 2015

It's Thursday and I'm throwing it back to last year to our first ever Pumpkin Week! This year, I'll just be doing one day of pumpkin celebrations (on Halloween) because of other events going on, but I can't wait to do some pumpkin investigations with my kiddos in a couple weeks! Post is originally from Oct. 2015 We've had a busy week in 2nd grade this week! We had Pumpkin Week Monday through Thursday and then went on a field trip today.  So...this teacher is T.I.R.E.D but satisfied with all of the fun and learning we had this week! We started the Pumpkin Week fun last Friday.  We had an Early Release day so families could enjoy the NC State Fair without pulling their child from school, so after we finished up some things from our Spider unit, we "planted" pumpkin seeds to germinate.  The kids were so excited to see what would happen to their seeds.   We ended up having quite a few to germinate, so they got to take their seeds home yesterday to plant and try to grow a pumpkin.

I forgot to take "after" pictures, but here is a video clip of some excited kiddos checking out their seeds Wednesday morning - 5 days after "planting".

We did all of our pumpkin fun at the beginning of this week focused in Language Arts. We kicked Monday off with a nonfiction book called Pumpkin Circle about the life cycle of a Pumpkin.  The photographs in this book are awesome.

After reading Pumpkin Circle, we did an activity with Main Idea - a concept we did before track-out back in September - so it was time to cycle back to it again to jog their memory.  They did a good job coming up with the main idea and finding details to support the main idea. On Monday we also did a KWL about pumpkins as well as using adjectives to describe pumpkins by size, color, shape, and texture.  It was a full 40 minutes of Language Arts on Monday -we were almost late to specials! On Tuesday we read a book with one of my favorite characters - Splat the Cat! We read Splat the Cat and the Pumpkin Picking Plan to talk about author's purpose.

Obviously Rob Scotton writes all of his books to entertain his readers, but I made them come up with some details from the book as to what was entertaining.  We brainstormed together and worked on writing our details as a class.  Then they got to color (their favorite part) and put their pumpkin together!

Wednesday we read one other pumpkin fiction book called Pumpkin Town and retold the story using Somebody, Wanted, But, So, Then.

We worked on the top chart together retelling the story.  I have used SWBST with some of my reading groups, but not everyone had used this retelling strategy before, so there was a good bit of guidance with them helping me fill in the boxes.  Then, I gave them time to transfer the information from the chart to their retelling paragraph.  Maybe this strategy will stick, but I'm sure I'll have to keep going back to it.

I only wish I had had time to read all of the pumpkin books I had - we had so much going on there wasn't time to touch even half of them unfortunately.  Note to self for next year - gotta read more of them :)

During our excel intervention time this week, we had a pumpkin twist - seems only right!

We made life cycle of a pumpkin flip books!

We did read a couple books with one of my groups that covered the life cycle a little more in addition the Pumpkin Circle we had read on Monday.  Most of my kids didn't know about the Green Pumpkin stage.

Then, came Thursday - the day - Pumpkin Day!

After a couple of assessments we had to complete, we finished our Pumpkin Diagrams that we started on Wednesday.  We have been talking about diagram and labels a lot recently between spiders and now pumpkins.  While they colored, I set up our Pumpkin Taste Test snack!

Mixed review on this picture of the inside of the pumpkin I had taken for them last weekend - some said "eeewww" and some said "cool!".  I love how it looks, so I'm with the "cool!" kids on this one!

I wish I hadn't been so busy passing out snack, doing our graphing, and dealing with a fire drill (of course!) to take pictures of all our pumpkin food.

Because we were doing some graphing of our favorite pumpkin treats, I made my kids take at least one taste of the following so they could pick their favorite:

Pumpkin Seeds

Pumpkin Pie

Pepperidge Farm Pumpkin Swirl Bread

Little Debbie Pumpkin Delights

Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Muffins

The favorite was the swirl bread.  I have quite a few picky eaters this year, plus 7 and 8 year olds haven't all acquired a taste for pumpkin quite yet, but they loved this bread!

Then I let them choose if they wanted to try the following:

Krispy Kreme Pumpkin Spice Doughnuts (MY FAVE!!!)

Apples with Pumpkin Fluff (most just wanted the apples - okay - more fluff for me!)

Keebler Pumpkin Spice Fudge Stripe Cookies

Needless to say - they had tons of sugar - which probably explains part of their hyper-ness that came later in the day - I should have known better.  We also made pumpkin hats with facts about pumpkins - I let them loose on this one, no guidance at all - so it was interesting to read their facts!

After lunch, we became scientists and mathematicians!  We covered our tables and pulled out our pumpkins.  A couple had rotted, so I was glad I had extras so that each table could have one.

For each activity, they would estimate and then actually measure/count.

So we started by estimating the height of their pumpkins using unifix cubes, tens sticks, as well as inches.  Then they got to use the tools to measure.  We haven't covered measurement this year, so considering that, they did well with this activity.

I LOVED how this table decided to measure the height of their pumpkin with the unifix cubes - I hadn't thought about going across to make sure that they had the height right.

We also measured the circumference of our pumpkins and talked about the right tool to measure around the pumpkin - and guess who forgot to bring the right tool to school?!?!  This teacher!  So, we modified and I pulled some old Christmas curling ribbon out of the closet, they worked together to measure around the pumpkin, and then cut it, and then we laid it up against a yardstick (or 2!) to find their circumference.

After measuring the height and circumference, we moved on to weighing our pumpkins.  Unfortunately, but fortunately, the scale I ordered to weigh our pumpkins did arrive in time (it came today - ugh!).  BUT, since our school nurse is directly across the hall and she has a doctor's office scale in her room, she was nice enough to let us pull it in the hall to weigh our pumpkins and it actually turned out better!  So Nurse Sami for the win!!

After each group weighed their pumpkin we ranked them from lightest to heaviest.  Two groups were tied at 11 pounds, followed by an 19 pounder, and our biggest pumpkin at 22 pounds!

We then did a quick Sink or Float experiment with a big storage box full of water and one of the pumpkins.  Almost all of them thought it would sink, so it ended up being a good lesson about how the inside is hollow and the air keeps it from sinking below the surface.

Then, came the most time consuming, and loud part of our afternoon - cutting the pumpkins open and counting all the seeds.  As I carved each table's pumpkin open, I talked to them about strategies for counting their seeds.  They were going to put them in groups of ten, circle the ten, and then move on. That would help them when it came time for counting.

"YUCK!  Pumpkin guts!"

"This feels awesome!"

"Cool!!"

And the counting begins...

By the time it was all said and done, this table came in at the winner with 583 seeds!  Of course, it was the 22 pound pumpkin too!

Little tip for you - as I was helping this last group count their seeds, to make sure that we didn't count a group twice, as I helped them count, we moved 10 groups of 10 seeds into piles of 100.  Then once we had all the groups grouped and counted, it was easy to count the hundreds, tens, and ones.  Goes back to place value - wish I had thought of it WAY earlier to help the other groups count their seeds!

And that was our pumpkin week and day!

Did I get to everything I wanted to do?

No

Did I get to everything I made for my Punkin' Day unit?

Not even close!

Did my kids have fun?

Yes

Did my kids learning something?

Yes

And those last two are what matters most.  At the end of every special day like this, I always go "Why am I doing this to myself?"  But then I have to think about these two last questions.  If they learned something and they had fun, then it was worth it - messy floors and all.  Seeing their excitement this week over something has simple as sprouting pumpkin seeds made me realize why I went into teaching.  They were exploring something new and that was so exciting for them and me.

Where did I get all of these activities for Pumpkin Week from you ask?

You can find them in my It's Punkin' Day unit in my TPT Store!