It's Pumpkin Centers Day!

This is definitely my favorite time of the school year. I love how much you can teach the students using realia (real life objects). During our pumpkin centers yesterday we measured, inspected, weighed, wrote, and read about pumpkins and their life cycle. According to my students...It was the BEST day ever!!!! LOL...okay, they always say that when we have fun activities!

Tuesday afternoon, after the students left, I set up our classroom for pumpkin centers day. I created their pumpkin activity books they took with them while rotating to each center.

The first center we had was the "Pumpkin Inspection Station." Here the students inspected the outside and the inside of their pumpkin. They got to "dig" deeper ;) They also got to label the parts of the inside and outside of a pumpkin.

The second center was the "Sink or Float" center. Here the students made predictions and tested their hypothesis. The observed which side the stem was facing too.

The third center was the "Life Cycle" center. Here the students got to read books and use the life cycle cards I made to figure out the stages. All of these activities are found in my "All About Pumpkins" unit on TPT (http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/All-about-Pumpkins-791709). - This lesson also comes in Spanish. I use both at the same time to help my ESOL students acquire the social/academic language.

Here are some pictures:

These are the pages I put inside their activity books. 

As part of their morning work, my students had to decorate their book covers.

I used flash cards and posters in both English and Spanish to help my kiddos acquire new vocabulary in both languages

After rotating to all the centers, we had McDonald's Lunch. The first grade teachers ordered Happy Meals for our students. They were so happy with their Halloween Buckets! 

After lunch, we tasted different pumpkin products (pumpkin pies, pumpkin seeds, etc.)

We then work on some art projects. I let the students use the seeds and pulp from their pumpkins.

Here is an examples of it (the top part is where the students glued the real seeds and pulp):

 

To finish the day in style, we carved a pumpkin! :) 

This year we decided to have pumpkin centers day with our 5th grade reading buddies. It was the best idea ever since I didn't have any parent volunteers and I couldn't run all the centers on my own. We were able to complete everything in one short day!