Kattie Comeau: How Many Seeds in Your Pumpkin?

Again, I got to sub in my old class and the teacher was flexible so I asked if I could do this awesome pumpkin activity with the kids that I "stole" from my friend Nicole (THANK YOU).

So first thing was I went to a local farm and picked up 4 different sized/shaped pumpkins. I decided I would have 4 groups of 5 doing the activity.

Before we started we read this book:

It was awesome - it talks about how the students can estimate and count the seeds in their pumpkins.

I then had a baggie with 20 pumpkin seeds as an example of what 20 seeds looked like for estimating purposes.

I created an observation sheet for the students to fill out before and after the activity. Before we got started sorting and counting seeds they had to put their estimate on their sheet.

Pumpkin Observation Sheet

I also made a chart for the class and recorded all estimates before we dug into the guts!

*I had the students count the lines/grooves on the pumpkin as I heard a rumor that the more lines on the pumpkin, the more seeds would be inside. In our case the rumor was not true*

The kids had a GREAT time digging into the pumpkin guys and sorting out all the seeds. I had a bowl for them to throw them all into and afterwards we cleaned up all the guts. Depending on the group, they decided how they would sort their seeds to count (most groups choose to do groups of 10). After we were done counting, I gathered all the seeds and planned on washing and roasting the seeds for a treat but ran out of time :( BUT... I did leave a nice note to the teacher and said she could do it if she'd like :)

Here are a few shots of the sorting and counting :