plants | Classroom 2 Kids

When we finished (most of) our pumpkin math at school, we asked for some parent volunteers to come into the classroom to help us scoop out all the seeds of our 6 pumpkins and count them up! We were lucky to get 2 fantastic Moms to help us!

We brought in egg cartons to use as counters (thank you, Amanda, for bringing in so many extra cartons because a lot of students forgot!) We remembered our “Doubles Pictures” showed an egg caron for 6 + 6 = 12, so we cut off two egg cups to make them into “10 frame counting trays“. Each time we put a set of seeds in the tray, it added up to 10. We practiced our skip counting, “groups of” counting, 100 chart counting and MORE! With all the seeds we scooped out, there was a LOT of PUMPKIN SEED MATH to do! After writing all our totals on the board, we used our “tens strategies” to add everything up. First you LOOK for 10’s… well, actually, we looked for HUNDREDS!!! Then you see if you can MAKE 10’s (100’s) out of two numbers (that’s the easiest). Then you try to make 10’s (100’s) out of more than two numbers. Finally, you get to see what’s left and add it all up! Knowing your tens really makes the MATH EASY!

Scooping out all that goopy pumpkin pulp was messy and fun, but the best part was when we got to CARVE our pumpkins into Hallowe’en Jack o’Lanterns! (Did you know that the Irish first made Jack o’Lanterns out of TURNIPS???) Each table worked in a cooperative group to decide on and draw the features. Mrs. Boekhout, Mrs. R., and our two wonderful Moms went from table to table carving and sculpting. The result was SIX AMAZING Jack o’Lanterns!

We ran out of time to finish off our math, so after Hallowe’en we will go back to find out if our Scientific Hypothesis was true or not. Did the pumpkins with more ribs have more seeds than the pumpkins with fewer ribs? We also need to make a final COUNT of the number of seeds we counted all together! Some of the seeds will be roasted and EATEN, but maybe we will save some and PLANT THEM in the Spring just like in the Pumpkin Patch video that we watched.

Pumpkin Scooping MATH on PhotoPeach

Of course, doing the Math wasn’t ALL of the FUN!!!
Here is a little Pumpkin Scooping Video of the action!

Have a look at our photos and see if YOU can figure out HOW MANY SEEDS WE COUNTED!

Do you think our Hypothesis will be TRUE or FALSE?

TOMATOSPHERE!
Does that sound a bit like ‘Outer Space’? …Well, it is!

For nine years now, the Canadian Space Agency, the University of Guelph, Agriculture Canada, Heinz Foods, and Stokes Seeds have participated with over 12,000 schools in Canada and the USA to grow tomato seeds as part of a “Mission to Mars” study.

Astronauts in space for a long time will need nutritious and tasty food, but they have limited room! Tomatoes can be transported as seeds and when grown, provide good nutrition, remove carbon dioxide exhaled by humans, return oxygen to the air, and even provide purified water through transpiration from the leaves! Wow! …but the question is… will tomato seeds be able to germinate (grow from a seed) and grow healthy plants with lots of fruit?

We did a “blind study” in our class (no, we didn’t have to wear blindfolds!) for this SCIENCE EXPERIMENT. We were given two packages of seeds but weren’t told which were the “control group” (normal) and with were the “treatment group” (put in a simulated space environment for 3 months). We grew our seeds in peat pellets (they look like mini hockey pucks that POP UP into little plant pots!) under our special “grow light” in the classroom. We counted how many germinated and we did some measuring to see which plants grew the best. We learned how the first seed leaves are very simple so that they can grow fast and we saw how the true leaves were a lot fancier!

We also tried germinating the seeds in little gel balls. That didn’t work as well as just planting them in soil.

When the roots started to grow through the pellets, we could transplant them into bigger pots. They made great Father’s Day presents too!