My friend Janet, who is now a retired teacher, has been wonderful enough to bring in these very large pumpkins for my class to enjoy for the past several years. She actually gets them from a pumpkin patch called, Bates Nut Farm, which is in Valley Center, CA.
My students had worked with smaller pumpkins for the first part of the day. Then I had them estimate how much they thought the large pumpkin weighed. I also had them decide whether they thought it would have more or less seeds than the smaller ones that they worked with.
Students then got to approach the pumpkin one at a time. They lifted the sheet of paper and peeked inside to see the seeds. They had to then decide if they wanted to keep or change their original thought about there being more or less seeds than the smaller pumpkins. It was amazing to see how patient each child was to have their turn at a peek inside the pumpkin.
After they all had a chance to peek inside the pumpkin, I had several students volunteer to once again approach the seedy mush to count the seeds. These seeds were much larger than the seeds in the smaller pumpkins. The smaller pumpkins that we used had 500-550 seeds,
How many seeds do you think this pumpkin had? Do you think it had more or less seeds than the smaller ones? How much do you think it weighed? Well, you are at a bit of a disadvantage since you can't actually see the pumpkin, so just take a guess.
Yes, the actual weight of the pumpkin was 103 pounds. There were 600 seeds, which was more than the smaller pumpkins. This was kind of surprising to me, because it is usually the other way around. In years past our smaller pumpkins have had more seeds than the larger one.
Well, it was a lot of fun and I'm glad that my class enjoyed our Pumpkin Day along with the big and small pumpkins.
HAPPY PUMPKIN DAY!
Pumpkin Math Activities
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