We read the story Pumpkin Pumpkin and discussed the life cycle of a pumpkin. Then we created pumpkins with vines on them that show the order of how a pumpkin grows.
This last week we moved on in our fall unit, and started our mini unit on pumpkins. We started out reading nonfiction books about pumpkins, then we filled out a web thinking map about things we can do with pumpkins.
Then we read “The Biggest Pumpkin of All” and I brought in a pumpkin so that students could investigate the pumpkin. They measured the pumpkin using connecting cubes, tested to see if the pumpkin floats, and explored the inside and outside of the pumpkin.
We have continued to learn about poems and today we listened to the poem 5 Little Pumpkins Sitting on a Gate on the SMART board. We listened to the song and learned ordinal numbers by following along with the song / poem.
Then to practice what we’ve learned about ordinal numbers, we played an ordinal numbers matching game. Students stood up in front of the room while other students sat down and called out two different ordinal numbers, “I’ll pick the 2nd student and the 5th student”. If they made a match with the Halloween picture they scored a point.
We read the book Pumpkin, Pumpkin and discussed how the pumpkin didn’t start out as a pumpkin but as a seed. We retold the story by making a model of the life cycle of the pumpkin.
We read Pumpkin Pumpkin and talked about the life cycle of a pumpkin and remembered what we read in the story. The students then made a model of the life cycle.