I have a pumpkin day in October when everyone brings in a pumpkin. We spend the whole day with various pumpkin activities.
1. Sort the pumpkins as many ways as you can: size, color, stem or no stem, bumpy or smooth, painted or not, etc.
2. Weigh the pumpkins using a food scale or a balance scale. Put the pumpkins in order from smallest to largest.
3. Measure (using string) the outside of the pumpkins and put them in order from the skinniest to the fattest.
4. After all the comparisons are done, I put the pumpkins in the middle of the circle and we play a game where I choose a pumpkin in my head and the children try to guess which one it is by my clues.
5. I always bring in two pumpkins—one big and one small. We graph which one we think will have the most seeds and how many we think are in each. Bring in probability - use words such as 'likely, not likely, most likely". I cut the pumpkins and we count by putting the seeds into piles of 10 on a paper that has 10 circles on it. Each time we fill the paper, we know that we have 100 seeds counted. Every year I have done this, the smaller pumpkin has the most seeds!
6. We cook the seeds in the oven or you could send them home with a student to be toasted and we eat them. .
7. Make pumpkin cookies, pie, or bread with the pumpkin or just cook it and add butter or brown sugar.
8. I give every student an award for his/her pumpkin at the end of the day. Categories could be: biggest, smallest, bumpiest, roundest, etc.