Pumpkins!

Our look at fall this week was all about PUMPKINS! Or as Ezra calls them, PUMPGAHS! It's officially October, officially 2 weeks from our new baby's due date, and we had two mornings of 70 degree weather this week!! Fall has arrived to Florida!

On Monday, we looked at the life cycle of a pumpkin. It was a learning experience for all of us because I did not realize that a pumpkin actually comes from the fruit of the flower on the pumpkin vine- so awesome! It is crazy too that a tiny pumpkin seed only takes 4 months to turn into a great big pumpkin once planted. We talked about life cycles of baby to grown up, seed to pumpkin, and looked at pictures and ordered them. We read our story Seed to Pumpkin and I was told it was kinda boring. We liked Too Many Pumpkins much better. 

Next, we took a small pumpkin to investigate. We talked about all the parts of the pumpkin- inside and out. We polished our pumpkin, then cut it up to explore the inside. We put all the guts in a bag and really looked at them closely. We then did a craft to label the parts of a pumpkin. We also did a scissor and glue exercise to complete pumpkin patterns. 

Polishing the pumpkin.

In the afternoon, we had a special surprise snack that we made while we told dad and brother the life cycle of a pumpkin. It was way too sweet to finish but it sure was fun to make.

Brother liked learning about the life cycle of pumpgahs too.

On Tuesday, we did a lot of writing practice on P for Pumpkin and J for Jack-o-lantern. We even were able to write our S in our name all on our own. We are still timid when it comes to S but we are getting there! We did a puzzle that we had to order 1-10. 6 and 9 were confusing when we had to order them but mom wouldn't help and we figured it out all on our own. ;) Next we did a graphing exercise with a pumpkin dice and we raced to the top to see who would win. I have a little bit our doubts that we got tired of rolling the dice and blue just happened to win by such a long shot but I was distracted so I am not sure. We decided we were done after this game.

 Wednesday, we did so much school work because we were having so much fun! We did a color by numbers picture and Silas did a very nice job. After that we did an experiment called Pumpkin Sink or Float. We made a little pumpkin boat and we guessed wether or not it would sink or float. Silas said sink and I said float. Then he chunked it in the water and it went straight to the bottom! He said he knew it was going to sink! I said lets clean off our pumpkin and put it in more gently and guess what- it DID float. So we learned that how we do our experiments also affects results. Silas asked to do Math so we did some math problems with our counters. I didn't realize how confusing it is to switch to making 2s after working on S so much. All of our 2s looked like S so I drew him some to trace. Silas understands addition and that's exciting. We took a break and read another fall story called

Bear Has a Story To Tell. Ezra enjoyed pointing out all the animals. Then we made a little book called "How Is This Pumpkin Feeling?" and we drew faces on the pumpkins to show their feelings. This reminded us that we should read Happy Halloween, Mouse. This was enough school for us today!

Today, we talked about how we investigate the world with our senses. How can we tell it's fall with our sight, smell, taste, hearing, and touch? We talked about the yummy flavors of fall that people like and wait all year for- like pumpkin spice coffees and pumpkin treats like in Too Many Pumpkins or our favorite pumpkin cookie from Starbucks. We made a piece of pumpkin pie to enjoy with our pretend pumpkin coffee. 

I love his face here!

Next, we compared what's the same and different about the big pie pumpkin and one of our little pumpkins. Silas said they both had stems and that's the same. The difference is we washed one and not the other.

Then we used our senses when we investigated our chopped up pie pumpkin.

Can you hear the knife cutting it?

"Yes, sounds hard to cut!"

What does it feel like to you?

"Slobber and drool."

What does it smell like to you?

"Alien slobber from a haunted house!"

What does it look to you?

"Kinda like the inside of a peach."

What does it taste like?

"Not good, we need to cook it"

 We then baked our pumpkin. While it was cooking, we talked about smells of fall and smelled spices, candles, and some essential oils. Some smells were spicy so they gave us "tears" and some smelled "yummy". We also decorated some foam pumpkins while we waited for our pumpkin to cook. Any excuse to use glitter is a good one.

Smelling fall smells in our essential oils.

When the pumpkin was nice and soft, we peeled out the meat, blended it, and made our pumpkin pie. 

When the pie was all done, we enjoyed a piece and it was yummy. Squirting the whip cream was very fun and we said it would be funny to squirt dad in the face.

Chef approved and obviously added his own whip cream! 

This was a nice treat to end this week of school! We still have lots of pumpkin activities so if we can get to a pumpkin patch this weekend, we study pumpkins some more next week! 

Leaves

This week we decided to abandon our B4FIAR books to study fall! We want to focus on different parts of fall each week and this week we decided to study leaves. Our life was very busy this week with family in town, a big youth event coming up, and a baby coming in the next few weeks so we only were able to focus two days on our study this week but since we got 15 fifteen fall books from the library we have been reading and talking about fall every day.

On Tuesday, all of our fall books came in to the library so we went to pick them up. We read a great book about autumn leaves and learned about many different types of leaves and also the parts of a leaf. We also worked on coloring and continued to practice writing our name.

On Wednesday, we went on a leaf hunt. We went to our park with our back pack and looked for all kinds of leaves. We found some on a vine, some that had already fallen on the ground, big leaves, tiny leaflets, leaves with smooth blades and leaves with jagged blades. We also found some buttercups like in the story, The Little Rabbit, so we added those to our back pack too. When we got home we examined the leaves with a magnify glass and pointed out the similarities and differences amongst the leaves. We also identified the parts. We then picked some of our favorites to use for an art project called leaf rubbings. We rubbed our crayon on paper with the leaves underneath and like magic the leaves showed through. This was so very cool to us and we learned it because the leaves have texture that this happens. Later that day we did an experiment with a balloon, vinegar, and baking soda that we saw on a learning show. This was almost the same ingredients we used in our hopping corn experiment so we knew why the balloon filled up with air- baking soda and vinegar make a gas.

Through the rest of the week and weekend we kept reading our autumn books and we noticed that our leaves we found shriveled a little more each day and our big yellow leaf that looked like a banana had turned completely brown and dry. On Sunday, we made our very own leaf man with pretend autumn leaves since fall weather has yet to hit us yet.

We may continue a few leafy things next week but we are excited to take a look at pumpkins! Some of the pumpkin patches open up this weekend and it's already feels like fall even if we haven't noticed it too much in the weather yet.