This past week I read the book Pumpkin Jack. The story is about Tim and his Jack O’Lantern and the process of growing pumpkins.
There’s a page where Tim searches for pumpkins around his garden. So we searched for little pumpkins hidden around the yard. I had a strip of paper with numbered circles 1-8 which led to a discussion of how many pumpkins we had and how many were left to find.
I held up a couple different types and asked the kids what was different; shape, color, texture. Then I mentioned that some were not pumpkins, but ‘squash’. “Squashes might be cooked in a soup or roasted. A pumpkin is a type of squash too. What kind of food can you make with a pumpkin? How many of you like pumpkin pie?” –> As I side note I just discovered that the plural of ‘squash’ is either ‘squash or squashes’
Next all the classes worked on creating our own rotting pumpkin.
The first two classes generated possible names for our pumpkin. The youngest 3s class had trouble coming up with names, so they started listing colors. The 4s class came up with a wider range of options and then voted on the winning name. As you can seem, ROBIN won.
The next class helped design the face, so I drew some of the shapes they used on their pumpkin face sketches on our board. Then another class voted on the shapes and voted on the design. Another class helped scoop out the pumpkin and another helped carve the shapes out.
Tips for next time:
- When carving the opening, make sure it is large enough for the scoop you are using. Fortunately mine was this year. Also, I chose a zig-zag design, but perhaps some type of simple puzzle piece shape might be better. Even though I mentioned that the kids shouldn’t be touching it as it gets moldy, I saw several kids opening up the top to see what was inside and not being able to replace it. If you really don’t want the kids to lift up the top, you could make the opening on the bottom.
- Have more little pumpkins to find. There were kids who were upset that they didn’t get a chance to find a pumpkin, but that cleared up after I let them go hide the pumpkins for the next class. There was one class where I had them search first, and that may be a better option as that class commented on the page where Tim searches for pumpkins, “Hey! We did that!”
- When I copied the face I didn’t get the eyes as close together as there were in the drawing, the kids didn’t notice, but I did! Haha.
To recap, here was my plan for the class:
- read Pumpkin Jack book
- have kids search for pumpkins
- count them
- talk about squashes and pumpkins
- use clipboards and have kids draw their own pumpkin faces, then write their name.
One of the teachers commented that this class was the best yet as the kids always had something to do. They loved searching for something. It’s a good thing to consider to add little objectives for their exploring instead of purely open-ended.