Pumpkin Investigations

Happy Halloween!  Today was a fabulous day of investigations.  First and foremost I would like to extend a “thank you” to all of the parents of our first graders that donated a pumpkin (no matter the size) for our investigations day.  The students learned a lot about pumpkins and it was a great way to spend our Halloween day at school.

  Students hypothesized if their pumpkin would sink or float.  Then, they recorded their results.                Students also hypothesized if the force from a blow dryer would make their pumpkin roll.  Afterwards, they recorded their results.

Then, students predicted the height of their pumpkin.  They used unifix cubes to check their predictions and then recorded the results.Students also predicted the circumference of their pumpkin.  They used string to measure and recorded their results.

They then guessed the weight of their pumpkin and recorded the actual answer in their recording books.  All the students in first grade voted for how they wanted our grade level pumpkin to be carved.  Their three choices were happy, silly, or scary.  They chose ScARy!

Then, the students predicted how many seeds they thought would be in our pumpkin.  We took a pumpkin back to our classroom and pulled out all of the seeds. The students grouped the seeds by 10 and together we counted…

wait for it…

467 SEEDS!!!

This cute little pumpkin investigations was created by Cara Carroll over at First Grade Parade.  You can check out this unit HERE.