stART-How Many Seeds in a Pumpkin?

This week for our stART project we read How Many Seeds in a Pumpkin?

"This book depicts a class of ten children who are given three pumpkins (big, medium, and small) and asked how many seeds are in a pumpkin? The children estimate, scrape the seeds out themselves, decide what method to use to determine the number of seeds, and then count using that method (skip-counting, with one group counting by 2s, another by 5s, and Charlie the protagonist counting by 10s). They then realize that the small pumpkin has the most seeds, and their teacher explains why. The children are enthusiastic in their mathematical endeavor. The illustrations are charming, and the kids are depicted very expressively throughout." Amazon review
Of course, there was nothing else we could do but get some pumpkins and count the seeds.
This was great for Luke and Kim especially, since they don't really remember being involved in carving pumpkins, so it was a new experience for them. (We also went on to make pumpkin pies--which is a post for another day)

I do also want to make a point of pointing out the temperature on this October 15th day in Central New York. Uh oh--I wonder what kind of winter we have in store for us this year?

Luke was amazed when he removed his pumpkin's lid! He also never, ever touched the pumpkin pulp---he only used a spoon to retrieve the seeds.

Luke's partner was big sister Becky.

Kimberly's partner was Grace. Grace wouldn't touch the pulp either, but Kim kept washing her hands in the goo.

Becky cut the pumpkins in half to speed up the seed retrieval time.

Washing hands

After collecting the seeds we put them on a cookie sheet, placed them in the oven and dried them out.

Gracie decided that she and Kim would group their seeds into groups of 10-for ease of counting.

Pumpkins have a lot more seeds than I ever imagined!!

Becky and Luke put their seeds in groups of 5's.

Luke really got into this, because, as he said, "I will be 5 on Kim's birthday!" Figure that one out ?!?

It takes a long time to make all these little piles.

This is what Gracie thought of the pumpkin seed she tried eating.

Grace and Kim's grand total was 475 seeds---that's A LOT of seeds, a few hundred more than what we thought would be in our relatively small pumpkins.

Becky and Luke were the pumpkin seed winners with 629 seeds!

The seeds are now in a bowl and are proving to be a fun manipulative. Above you can see Thomas the Tank Engine stuck in the seeds. I think that we will also do some mosaic art with these---maybe dye some and have an art day! I will post if we do.

Check out all the great stART activities at A Mommy's Adventure.