Pumpkin S.T.E.M.

With Halloween right around the corner, it's no surprise that pumpkins have been on our mind all week! We started out by reading Spookley the Square Pumpkin and working on our numbers at circle time. Then, we sorted out some popsicle sticks until we had a stick for each number 1-8. After lining up our sticks, we glued some crosspieces on and set them aside dry. The next day, we gave our squares a coat of orange paint. On Thursday, we chose face pieces and cut out the ones we wanted to use to make our own Spookley. We also put together a yummy Spookley at snack time!

Friday, we worked as a big group to see what we could discover about a pumpkin. Using our eyes, fingers and nose, we came up with a long list of pumpkin observations and words such as hard, smooth, round, has a stem, heavy, big, and on and on. We had some disagreement over whether our pumpkin was heavy or light, so had to try and lift it ourselves so everyone could make up their own mind!

After checking out the outside of the pumpkin, it was time to take the top off and scoop out the insides- which led to lots more pumpkin words like sticky, gooey guts and smelly!

After getting all those gooey guts scooped out, we worked in pairs to separate the seeds and slide them into a circle so we could count them. After adding all the circles up together, the calculator said our pumpkin had 496 seeds!!

Last, we voted on what kind of face to make and then Ms. Heather carved our pumpkin into a happy jack o lantern. Smiles all around!