Pumpkin Day (EEEKK!)

Dressed up among my characters as Junie B. Jones! 

I seriously count down the days until fall festivities can take place in my classroom! Without a doubt, October is one of my favorite months.   As soon as the first of the month rolls around, I dig up every pumpkin book and fill the room with candy corn and various colors of fall.  I try to integrate the season wherever I can (teams, decor, calendar, literacy workstations, library, etc).

So let me now introduce you to PUMPKIN DAY! This was a unit developed by one of my favorite teachers, Cara Carroll at The First Grade Parade.

I began the day with a pumpkin investigation that involved various workstations.  Students worked in teams (of course!) to practice estimation, making predictions, measuring, and counting.

The most challenging part of our day was getting our hands dirty.  I was so baffled by the looks of pure disgust and shock as I told each team to reach in and grab the seeds with their hands.  Needless to say, we got over that really quick!

They were simply shocked at how many seeds a
 pumpkin could hold.

Check out that independence!

Teamwork at its best...everyone is lending a helping (slimy) hand.

The next activity involved writing similes (one of their favs!).  This is a great book by Loreen Leedy...

We wrote down our scientific observations while focusing on using our five senses. As a whole group the class provided various adjectives to describe their pumpkin.

Here are a few examples of pumpkin similes that were created.  Their creativity just tickled me to death!

Don't worry...he assured me that he was
referringto the character from the movie :)

The yarn looks like the stringy insides!

To end our fun filled day we used the help of several classroom volunteers to carve our team pumpkins.  Don't worry parents, we did this with EXTREME adult supervision and used those tiny tools that you can buy in a home kit.  But first, we had to talk about the purpose of voting because it definitely wouldn't have been fair for Ms. Patterson to choose how they carved their pumpkin!  The BrainpopJr. Video called Rights and Responsibilities was a great introduction to the concept of voting.

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