Pumpkin Day!

Yesterday was Pumpkin Day in first grade! I absolutely LOVE pumpkin day; it's so much fun for the kids every year!

This year we started off our morning by carving our big class pumpkin. We sat in a giant circle on the carpet and the kids helped me figure out the order of steps I would need to take to carve it. It was obvious quite of a few of them had some schema on this subject, because they knew exactly what to do. We took off the top, checked out the goop inside, cleaned out the pumpkin, carved a face, and then lit it up using battery powered tea candles.

After we had gone through the steps to carve the pumpkin, I challenged students to use a flow map to record the steps we took. I encouraged them to use the words first, next, then, and last to help them describe the order.

Once students had a completed flow map, I gave them a piece of handwriting paper to transfer their work. Thus they created a how to paragraph on carving a pumpkin.

To finish things off students used their watercolors to paint a pumpkin. Their paintings turned out fabulous! I love any day at school that we get to paint. Everyone works so hard and their work turns out amazing every time.

Once the paintings were dry we put all the pieces together. Here is an example of the finished product:

When the students went to Ms. Coburn's class in the afternoon they got to use their own mini pumpkins to do a variety of pumpkin day activities such as a sink or float experiment, measuring, and comparing. What a fun day in first grade!