Pumpkin Exploration

So on Friday, after our field trip, I carved the tops off of 22 pumpkins with the smallest carver ever. It took about two hours. During this time the kids were at lunch, then I took some with me to recess duty, then I carved away during our STEM activity and finally finished up while we were working through our Pumpkins: Can, Have, Are, Grow page from my pumpkin pack!

I let the kids decorate their pumpkins for a contest in the morning. We used Sharpies, but Cassondra let her kids paint! 

I handed out some gloves for the kiddos that didn't want to touch the guts and goop of their pumpkin. Then I let them go at it! 

They had to dig out all their guts and and seeds. Then we did some estimating to see how many seeds we could pick up in a handful. At our field trip, Miss Linda(the farm owner) told us that a pumpkin could have more than 400 seeds! We were running short on time due to cutting the tops of 22 pumpkins, so we didn't get to count all of our seeds. 

We had so much fun exploring our pumpkins and making a mess(HUGE MESS) (I warned the custodian before hand) with the guts and seeds. We had a fifteen minute clean up time and then had snacks and finished our Fall party with an episode of Scooby Doo. I loved hearing the kids tell me ," You plan the best parties ever!" I have a lot to live up to for Christmas!