Pumpkin Seed Count 2007

Jennifer Wagner is back with another year of Math fun with her Pumpkin Seed Count 2007.
Read on to learn more!

Our Work

Links to Learning

---------- Our Work for the Project ----------

Our Pumpkin Seed Count 2007 work began at Open House where each of our families estimated how many seeds would be in our pumpkin.
Next, we weighed our pumpkin. It was a bit less than 4 pounds. The children were surprised that it didn't weigh more. (Photo 1)
Our next job was to order our estimates from least to greatest. Most estimates were low! (Photo 2)

We decided to average our estimates to come up with a class average - 180.

Next it was time to open and count our seeds.
Tens of seeds turned into over a hundred seeds, into...

HUNDREDS OF SEEDS!

How many seeds were in our pumpkin? 542!

What was the difference between our class estimate and the actual count?
542 - 180 = 362

Try your hand at some more math! Find the difference between each family's estimate and the actual number. Click here for the data (information) sheet.

---------- Extending Our Learning ----------

Life Cycles is an important concept in our second grade Science program.

A terrific extension of this project is to read The Pumpkin Circle. The children were enthralled as we read it, then watched the video.
Very SPECIAL thanks to the Niles family for loaning these to us!

To learn about this wonderful book go to Pumpkin Circle.

Next we made "Pumpkin Circle Headbands" showing all the stages of the life cycle of the pumpkin.
See an example of our headbands below. Click here to download the graphics we used for these.

Seed to Sprout to Plant to Flower to Green Pumpkin to Orange Pumpkin to Seed...
The children loved seeing and saying the stages, and how the circle never ends!

These were made with a seed packet pattern I found online, along with a google image search for pumpkin clipart. We had 542 seeds and 19 students, so we used our calculators to divide 542 by 19 to find out how many seeds each person would receive.
The children colored, cut, and glued together seed packets (see left), then counted out 28 seeds each.
As a final bit of pumpkin fun, we created jack-o-lantern head riddles about ourselves (with a picture of us inside without our jack-o-lantern heads).

The seed packet read Toast me, Bake me, Plant me, Shake me, BUT before the children could do any of these, they were asked to complete a homework assignment similar to this one from Busy Teachers Cafe.

---------- Links to Learning ----------

To learn more about the world of pumpkins and for some great ideas, try the links below.

How a Pumpkin Grows Pumpkin Life Cycle Life Cycle of a Pumpkin
at Ramsey’s Farm

Pumpkin Circuit
Some great ideas
for using pumpkins Pumpkins at the Virtual Vine Pumpkins in the Primary Classroom

Grade 2 Pumpkin Math Unit Make a Pumpkin Globe Pump Up the Curriculum with Pumpkins
Pumpkin Unit in Mrs. Nelson’s Class
A unit for kindergarten, but the good ideas can be adapted for other grades
Pumpkin Theme at Mathwire - GREAT!
Carve Your Own Virtual Pumpkin Online
Pumpkins
Lots of ideas and links Pumpkin Unit
Busy Teachers Cafe Pumpkin Seed Count
See all our work from last year!

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