We activated our schema and talked about all the things we knew about pumpkins already. Then we read about pumpkin harvests on PebbleGo. The kids were in charge of making their own Circle Maps to brainstorm all the things they knew about pumpkins. We were very excited to learn that they can be blue, red, and even green! They can also weigh as much as a cow. Yowza!
Wednesday was Pumpkin Day in first grade. We had such a wonderful time! This is always one of my favorite days in the whole year. Seeing how excited the kids get is one of the highlights of teaching kids at this age.
We read Seed to Pumpkin and talked about the pumpkin's life cycle. We even learned a new word photosynthesis. These kiddos really love to learn new vocabulary! We were excited to learn that the pumpkin's life goes on and on and on!
We also created Bubble Maps for our class pumpkin. We talked about adjectives that would describe the pumpkin in detail. We worked on helping another person visualize our pumpkin without actually being there. After the students made their bubble maps and wrote corresponding sentences, they were able to paint a pumpkin picture with their watercolors. They worked so hard, and these really came out beautifully!
We ended up doing a Brace Map for the parts of a pumpkin. The kids really understood that you are taking a whole object and breaking it down into its important parts. This tied in wonderfully to the book we had read as well as to PebbleGo!
We did a Sink or Float experiment with our tiny pumpkins, too! The kids were so excited to hypothesize and do their experiments. We talked about why some pumpkins float and why others don't. Everyone concluded that if there is more air inside and less pulp, the pumpkin must float! One of our friends even hypothesized that the shape must have something to do with it, too. If a pumpkin has a wide, flat bottom them it's more likely to float on the water like a boat! These kids really use their higher-level thinking!
Since we've learned that one way to use pumpkins is to carve them into jack-o-lanterns, I went ahead and carved the pumpkin while the kids were working hard all day. We read a couple "spooky" stories by the "pumpkin light." It was a great way to end the day and get excited for Halloween!
Thursday ended up being Pumpkin Day Part II. :) We were SO busy the day before that we didn't end up doing a lot of the fun activities. I wanted the kiddos to experience all the greatness that Pumpkin Day is, so we added an extra day!
The students compared their mini pumpkins with another student's in class. We talked about color, shape, and they measured their pumpkins using cubes. It was a great way to work as a team and have fun while secretly learning! :)
We also talked about visualizing and comprehension again. We talked about the importance of understanding what we read and making pictures in our heads. While I read The Little Old Lady Who Was Not Afraid of Anything, the kids visualized and drew pictures of what was happening in the story. We used the pictures to create a little book to practice retelling. This is a really fun book, and I love using it on Pumpkin Day. They love seeing everything turn into a scarecrow!
Another one of my favorite books for Pumpkin Day is Spookly the Square Pumpkin. This story has a wonderful message of acceptance and not judging a book by its cover. The kids always enjoy it and really take the message to heart. After reading the story, we did a fun math connection to it. The students created their own pumpkin patch part-part-wholes. Then they filled in the parts with fun pumpkins, inspired by the book! We wrote fact families for our part-part-whole pictures.
At the end of the day, we played Pumpkin Bingo. This is always a HUGE hit (for obvious reasons!), and I find that it's a great way to teach vocabulary and tie into reading and phonics. We were definitely using our schema while we played! This was a great way to end off our pumpkin extravaganza.
Tomorrow is our field trip, and I could NOT be more excited! I wish the weather were a bit cooler, but what can you do? This is Texas after all. :) We're going to have a blast!!!
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