We had a great week of exploring our pumpkins before we culminated our learning in carving them and using as much as we could minimising waste, this is what we got up to.
Subjects covered: science, maths, english, information technology, art, photography, home economics, animal care, business studies, botany.
Monday
The children started by finishing the worksheets they had created themselves over the weekend on their laptops, which we would be using later on in the week for weighing and measuring the pumpkins. The children really enjoyed this as they are somewhat obsessed with technology in any sense and use it at any given opportunity.
The children then immortalised the pumpkins in art in the afternoon. They used charcoals and watercolours to draw the pumpkins and even dragged me into the activity (I have never been good at drawing).
Tuesday
We took it outside today and went to our local pumpkin patch. The children, especially Samantha, are developing an interest in photography so I have given them one of my old cameras to use. We spent a good 45 minutes wandering around the patch, Samantha taking very arty shots and Riley taking pictures of anything rotting. I also took the opportunity to talk to the children about how the pumpkins grow. The children observed that a number of them had been eaten by wildlife and they spoke about how the park could try and control them and keep them out humanely with fencing. They then realised through discussion how this wouldn’t work due to the variety of wildlife, big and small and animals like foxes being able to jump very high. The children realised that those planting the pumpkins would plant in excess knowing they would take a percentage of loss due to animals, lack of growth and weather. The children really enjoyed their time at the pumpkin patch and came away with the smallest pumpkin ever.
Wednesday
This morning was all about pumpkin maths and science. The children used the sheets they created to record the information gathered.
The pumpkins sizes were compared and then the children guessed their weights before putting them on the scales. We weighed the children and a 100g of sugar to give the children a comparison to help them with their guesses.
Various methods were used to measure the height, circumference and diameter of the pumpkins before adding these details to their worksheets.
They guessed whether or not they would be denser than water before dunking them in a bathtub full of water (which doubled to washing them).
The afternoon brought a more relaxed feel in the form of art work. The children took the chalk pens and decorated the pumpkins in some amazingly creative ways.
Thursday
Today was the day the children had been waiting for, Pumpkin carving day. We did this activity in our tuff trays for mess control and it worked well.
The children showed real perseverance here as it was a lot harder than they thought to cut the pumpkins up but they did it (highly supervised!). It was also a great sensory experience for them gutting the pumpkins after Riley had processed the feeling and gotten over his initial concerns.
We got a huge amount of flesh from the pumpkins in the end to cook with, some seeds to grow some pumpkins with next year (hopefully) and the children have had great fun and learnt a little along the way which is what it is all about.
Friday
Yep we weren’t done yet. Whilst the children were in bed I had cooked the mountain of pumpkin ready for the next day.
Today we blended it all down and began baking. The children made muffins with cream cheese frosting and brownies. They also discovered the puppy was crazy for pumpkin so not wanting her to miss out they made some simple pumpkin oat cookies for her.
They also roasted the seeds for snacking on through the day. The mountains of pumpkin we didn’t use has been portioned off and frozen for later use.
We are very thankful for our pumpkins and have had many learning opportunities from them, not to mention the joy of eating them in the end and the hopefulness of growing our own next season. We are already looking forward to discovering even more activities and finding ways of using more of them next year.
