Thursday, October 16, 2008

Pumpkins

No, this is not the annual pumpkin picture we take at the sad excuse for a pumpkin patch that we have here in South Florida.

No, this is not where I rave about the splendid Pumpkin Butter I made after reading though my google reader blogs. (Although it was heavenly and I will be making more!)

Today was the pumpkin project.

The one where each of my 19 darling third graders brought a pumpkin to school.

We predicted, measured, and graphed the mass of each pumpkin with the guts. They performed surgery on the pumpkins and then predicted, measured, and graphed the mass of the pumpkin without the guts. Then we moved on to height and circumference.

Did I mention predicting if it sinks/floats and counting the number of vertical lines? Or classifying the pumpkins at your table 4 different ways? How about reading The Pumpkin Book and writing a paragraph about the life cycle of a pumpkin?

Do you have time for meeting with your fourth grade writing buddies to write a descriptive paragraph about the pumpkin you named and spent so much time with today? No problem, we'll squeeze it in AFTER we feed the pumpkin guts to the worms.

I do love this project! I did however have 19 children "gutting" pumpkins in my classroom today. (I am not completely crazy, I called in the cavalry...7 parent volunteers and 1 university student.)

..but I am exhausted. And now toasting the pumpkin seeds.

...and writing up a presentation for the faculty meeting tomorrow about the Penny Harvest I've signed up to lead at the school this year. Thank goodness it's (almost) Friday!

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