Pumpkins, Pumpkins Everywhere!

Hi Folks!

This week in first grade we have been busy, busy, busy learning all about pumpkins in honor of the upcoming holiday.  We started off the week by making a Pumpkin KWL chart.  It turns out that my superstars already know a lot about pumpkins!  No worries though, they still had lots of things that they wanted to find out before the week was over.  On Friday we will add all of the new facts that we learned throughout the week to our "L" section of the chart. 



Pumpkin KWL chart we created as a whole group when I introduced the unit on pumpkins.

 One of the first things that we learned about pumpkins is how they grow.  We discovered that a pumpkin's life cycle is very similar to an apple's life cycle.  In fact, pumpkins and apples have lots similarties.  We made a pumpkin and apple Venn Diagram to discuss the similarties and differences between the Autumn fruits.  Both apples and pumpkins start as seeds, have flowers, start off as green in color, and mature into a fruit.  My favorite similarity is that they both can be made into pies!  We discovered that one way they are different is that apples grow on trees and pumpkins grow on vines.  On Friday, many of the kiddos are going to learn that the fruits taste much different too! 



Pumpkin life cycle ordering activity the students did to review.

Yesterday, the students got to watch a story via YouTube called The Legend of Spookley the Square Pumpkin.  The gist of the story is that Spookley was a square pumpkin that was constantly teased by the other pumpkins in the patch. One day Spookley blocked a square shaped hole in the fence to save the other pumpkins from rolling into the nearby bay during a terrible storm.  Spookley was a hero after that and the farmer decided to only plant seeds from Spookley to create more square pumpkins.  The farmer had a crop of not only square pumpkins, but all sorts of shapes and colors as well.  I had my kiddos to design their own square pumpkins after watching the story.  We used tissue paper and a glue/water mixture to create a "stained glass" effect for our colorful square pumpkins.  Check out a couple from our pumpkin patch below :)



The kids did a great job making their square pumpkins!  Our windows are beautifully decorated now!




This is a photo of some more of the Leaf Man stories the kids created last week.  It is displayed outside of our classroom in the hallway. 



I think that's all for now!  Have a happy Wednesday!

Love, 

Mrs. Cook