Pumpkin Activities
Pumpkin Activities
Students had so much fun doing pumpkin activities throughout October. They began by scooping the seeds out of a pumpkin, making an estimate of how many seeds there were, then working together to count the seeds.
Numbers of seeds in the pumpkins ranged from 160-750, and students were using a range of strategies to count these bigger numbers, such as grouping them into 10s, 20s, 25s, 50s, and 100s to complete their count.
Students have already had some practice counting large sets of numbers as we are now working with numbers up to 1000. As you can see, they have developed some efficient strategies for grouping items to count them.
I gathered the seeds and took them home to bake. Mrs. Bennett kindly delivered our pumpkins to a couple of very happy pigs!
The next day students sampled four different flavours of pumpkin seeds (plain, kettle corn, cinnamon sugar, and salt and pepper), recorded their assessment of each one, and selected a favourite. They collected data from classmates and made a bar graph of favourite flavours of pumpkin seeds.
Students also had fun using applying some new techniques with oil pastels and cooking oil to create these beautiful pumpkins! The cooking oil adds an interesting texture and resembles an oil painting.
Celebrating Mi'kmaq History Month
October is Mi'kmaq History Month. Students have continued to explore First Nations culture through artwork and have been learning about local indigenous art. They have been learning about quillwork and made their own version of quillwork with toothpicks and glue. This art project had a Math element to it, as students included shapes in their design that had a given perimeter. For example, their design needed to include two different shapes that have a perimeter of 8 quills, one shape with a perimeter of 12 quills, and one shape with a perimeter of 4 quills.
There has also been a connection to First Nations culture in Science in October, which will continue throughout the year. On September 29th we were honoured by a visit from Mi'kmaq knowledge keeper Greg Mansfield. He generously gifted us with 3 cut branches that are growing chaga mushrooms. Students worked together to come up with questions they could ask about the mushrooms.
After generating a list of questions students formulated, we determined which questions could be solved by completing an experiment, then selected the following question, "how long can mushrooms continue growing from a cut tree?" Students are helping to design the experiment and have already begun to create a lab report for this experiment. We will check in on the mushrooms regularly, make and record observations throughout the school year to attempt to answer this question.
As we carry out the experiment, students will have opportunities to learn and practice some skills and concepts in Science, such as: stating a problem, formulating a hypothesis, creating a list of materials, writing procedures to carry out experiments, making and recording observations, and forming conclusions. This is only one of many experiments students will conduct throughout the school year, but this will be a long-term project given the problem that is being considered. What a wonderful way for students to continue to make use of this generous gift from Greg Mansfield!