Fall Leaves & Pumpkins of all Kinds!

We started out our fall unit of study by going on a leaf hunt!  The kids really enjoyed this activity!  (And weeks later, they are still bringing me leaves from home!  I love it!) We used our five senses on our leaf hunt and compared the texture, sound and looks of various types of leaves.  Next, we described the leaves & learned various fall vocabulary words along the way.  We compared the real leaves to fabric leaves and paper leaves.  Then, we sorted, counted and graphed the leaves.  We even made leaf pictures with some of the leaves that we collected.  We talked about why leaves fall off of the trees in the fall & read a lot of books about the season of fall & leaves.  Check out the bookshelf to see some of the books that we have read over the course of the year!

We also talked about fall as a time of harvest and specifically learned about many different kinds of pumpkins.  We looked at pictures of pumpkins from all over the world, read books about them and even wrote about our favorite kind from class.

Again, we used our scientific thinking to hypothesize whether the various sized pumpkins would float.  First we weighed the pumpkins with our balancing scale.  Then, we weighed other objects such as centimeter cubes, wooden blocks, etc. to see how they would compare in weight to the pumpkins.  When the students saw that the small centimeter cubes and child-sized scissors sank, they were sure that the pumpkins would sink, too.  But, they found out that pumpkins float, too!  They were surprised!

When we cut our pumpkin open, we used our senses to see how the insides of a pumpkin were different than an apple.  We even put the pumpkins' seeds into groups & counted them.  We had 210 seeds in our pumpkin!

 

 

We ended our study of pumpkins with an amazing trip to Brookdale Farms and a fall party.  We even surprised the students with the fact that they could pick out their very own pumpkin on the farm!  It was fun to see all of the different pumpkins that came back to our class.