Pumpkin Week is in the Books!

Pumpkin week...always one of my favorite weeks of the year to plan!

I always forget how awesome things turn out when you integrate. 

 We recently learned about non-fiction text and schema.

So we started off the week talking about what kind of pumpkin schema we had.

Before I taught anything about pumpkins, we recorded our schema on pumpkin seeds & put it on our chart.

The next day, we read a non-fiction book about pumpkins. We learned lots of new information and also recorded it on a pumpkin seed. 

{Anchor chart inspiration from The First Grade Parade}

Our poem this week was I'm a Little Pumpkin. Perfect for the occasion!

It goes to the tune of I'm a Little Teapot.

We also read about the life cycle of a pumpkin and put the cycle in order using these cards from The First Grade Parade.  You can also watch this song...beware your kids will LOVE it!

{pumpkin life cycle song link}

Throughout the week the kiddos brought in mini pumpkins for a grammar activity.

The room began to look like a pumpkin patch!

We used our senses to describe our class pumpkin.

Each student wrote their descriptive words on their mini pumpkin.

What!? We get to write on our pumpkin!?!?

Total hit! Talk about concentration...you could hear a pumpkin drop!

We read the cutest book, The Littlest Pumpkin. It's a great book for making connections so we did just that.

We had a quick art activity too. Funny face pumpkins turned out adorable! 

Then it was time for our GREAT pumpkin investigation.

We headed down to the Science Lab.

First we labeled the parts of a pumpkin. 

Next up, will it sink or float.

Out of 42 kids...about 5 thought it would float!

Boy were they surprised!

We recorded our data on our Pumpkin Investigation log.

{Find it here}

We cut into the pumpkin so that we could count the seeds.

I put butcher paper down over their desks and gave each student a handfull.

They had to put them into groups of 10 for us to count.

Their predictions were anywhere from 20 to 101. But we actually had....408!!! They were shocked!

We also measured how tall our pumpkin was with cubes.

Everything that we did during the investigation we recorded as a class on this chart:

It's very similar to their personal ones that we glued in their science journals. 

At the end of the day I love hearing..."Mrs. Griffith, today was the best day ever!"

Totally makes all the hard work and planning I put into a moment like this worth it.