Pumpkin Day!

Friday I surprised my students, when they came into the classroom it was decorated with orange streamers, table covers, and pumpkins. We had a fun day learning all about the orange fall fruit. Did you know pumpkins were consider fruit? We discovered lots of fun facts during pumpkin day. Here's a look at how we celebrated...

Here's a quick glance at our day! Each activity involved pumpkins, and the subject we are usually working on at that time.

When they walked in they found pumpkins on their desks. Our neighbors grew pumpkins in their field this year so I was able to get each of them a pumpkin for free. They were so excited and immediately engaged!

All of our anchor charts for the day were prepped and posted on the board. Pumpkin books were in the display below.

For morning work they recorded their observations and inferences about what our day would be like. They also estimated how many candy pumpkins were in this jar. Later in the day the closest estimate won the jar. They shared one pumpkin with each kid in the class and took the rest home. The pumpkin thinking sheet is from Great Days with Mrs. Day.

During Daily 5 we read these close reading passages and answered comprehension questions from Susan Jones Close Reading Fall Pack. Her packs are amazing, I love all of them!

We wrote about how to grow a pumpkin (these writing sheets are from Stephanie Steward's Smart Pumpkin Unit). Then we used our five senses to record adjectives that described our pumpkins, and put pumpkin words in ABC order (those sheets can be found in Michelle's Hudgeon's Store for free).

Here's the adjective chart we made together after everyone created one on their own. They came up with lot's of different ways to describe a pumpkin!

We made simple paper plate pumpkins for the bulletin board outside our classroom. We put glue on the plate, then covered it with orange tissue paper. Added a brown construction paper stem cut from construction paper and a green vine, strips of green paper curled with our pencils. They turned out really cute. Look for the finished product at the end of this post!

During our math and science times we investigated our pumpkins. We measured them, discovered if they would sink or float, counted the lines on the outside, and estimated how many seeds might be inside. (The investigation sheet we used came from Mrs. Ricca's Kindergarten).

Then we cut open one pumpkin and counted the seeds together. We grouped them by 10's and found out there are a lot more seeds then we thought there would be! Over 300 seeds were counted and there were many still inside the pumpkin.

We discussed the life cycle of a pumpkin and made this anchor chart. The cut and paste steps came from the Mrs. Ricca's Kindergarden Mini Pumpkin Unit freebie.

They created their own cut and paste flow chart independently. I gave them a blank piece of green construction paper and they used the anchor chart to make their own version. Then they finished with this I-Spy color by sums pumpkin sheet which you can download free HERE!

They were so excited to "cook" something today! We made this simple No Bake Pumpkin Dessert recipe. We measured, poured and stirred. Each student had a cup and we measured out a portion of each step into them so they ended up with their own individual dessert rather than a large pan.

I didn't want to shave chocolate onto the top so we added a few chocolate chips. This was a favorite part!

Finally we got to taste our treat! They already knew we were going to graph if we liked the treat or not so they could be "critics." This was a very important job!

We graphed the results and filled out a data sheet. As you can see they LOVED it, for the most part. A couple of them didn't care for it, but they said they didn't care for other pumpkin desserts either. The graphing chart and data sheets are from Stephanie Stewards Smart Pumpkin Unit .

Here's how the bulletin board turned out with our paper plate pumpkins and our pumpkin facts. Perfect fall display! The "Did You Know" sheets were from Stephanie Stewards Smart Pumpkin Unit as well.