Costume Parade and Fall Fun
/ Aja AppelOur week was filled with fall fun and authentic learning opportunities. On Monday our mathematicians brainstormed a list of mathematical questions involving our pumpkins. We made predictions about how many seeds were in each pumpkin. Some students predicted that the largest pumpkin would have the most seeds, while others predicted that the smallest pumpkin would have the most seeds. On Tuesday students worked in teams to determine how many seeds were each in pumpkin. Students had to work together to determine the best way to count all their seeds. Some teams sorted the seeds into groups of ten and then hundreds to make counting quick and accurate. Most of us were surprised to discover that one of our medium sized pumpkins had the most seeds- over 600! Later in the week we roasted the seeds and split the total into thirds. We seasoned one third of the seeds with cinnamon and sugar. We seasoned another third with salt, and we seasoned the third group with pumpkin pie spice. Then we roasted the seeds and had fun tasting the different flavored seeds. We voted on our favorite seed seasoning and created a math graph to show our results. The vast majority of students preferred the seeds with salt! This week during project time several students painted their pumpkin or used remeda materials to create fun fall art pieces. Outside this week we relished getting to play in fall leaves and during our music time with Ms. McKenzie we sang a song called Pass the Pumpkin. On Thursday we had our annual ELC costume parade. We loved getting to admire each others’ costumes. On Friday we created a memory book page about our Halloween adventures. This week we’ve been calculating the temperature units in our fish tank to determine when our fish might hatch. Today we calculated that our tank is around 837 TUs and the fish typically begin to hatch around 850 TUs. Three fish hatched early and we are predicting that many more will hatch this weekend.