Pumpkins Galore

Last week, we learned all about pumpkins.  My kiddos this year love "nonfiction" type topics.  They are into anything that they can get their hands on and learn about.

We started off the prior Friday with my preclinical student (she'll be my student teacher in the spring) teaching the kids about the pumpkin life cycle.  This was one of the 4 lessons she needs to teach this semester.

Monday we started by talking about what students already knew about pumpkins.  Each child had the opportunity to share an idea, then additional ideas were added after each child had a turn.

On Tuesday, we drew and labeled a pumpkin. They loved this activity when we learned about apples, so I knew it would be a hit in the pumpkin learning too.  While we were working to draw our pumpkins and label them, we also snacked on pumpkin seeds.

On Wednesday, we compared apples and pumpkins using the freebie you see below from Reagan Tunstall.  We saved this for Wednesday because I felt like they had a good background on pumpkins to be able to compare them. This was our first time using a Venn Diagram and talking about comparisons, but I think they rocked it!  We did this together with me writing on the SMARTboard while they worked on their own papers at their seats.

We wrapped up our unit on Thursday as our Halloween party was Friday (thank-you early dismissal).  The last thing we did was a gallery walk.  I placed different types of pumpkins on each table along with brown bulletin board paper.  I got the procedure for this activity here.

This was also the first time for this activity.  It took 2 rotations to get the hang of the routine of writing what you see and not talking. Students REALLY wanted to share with one another what they saw.  After visiting every table and writing about what they saw, students then went back to their table and discussed what was written on their sheet of paper.  They also compared this to what they saw at other tables.  My students loved this idea, and it is something we'll definitely do again.

What do you do to learn about fall and pumpkins in your classroom?