Pumpkin project

Lily is in Kindergarten this year, and I decided early on that I was going to be sure we included some typical Kindergarten activities. Because she is the youngest of the 4 school age kiddos, it would be very easy to just do a daily math and phonics lesson, and call it a day. But, that's sorta what I did with Isaac, and I've often regretted it.

The year he was in K, we were just starting our Tapestry co-op, and so he just sort of got dragged along with whatever the girls did. For the most part, that was fine. Especially since we started off with pyramids and mummies, which any 5 year old boy would love. But, I missed all of the holiday and seasonal projects that I equate with Kindergarten.

So, I came up with a plan that would allow me a little time to fit in the traditional topics I wanted to tackle, while keeping our basic skills on the front burner. At first, I thought I would just include Lily, but then it became obvious that Isaac would both enjoy and benefit from our "unit time" as we now call it. Last week, we did pumpkin math during our unit time. Currently, our unit theme is pumpkins. We've studied their life cycle, memorized a pumpkin poem, made pumpkin tarts, and had a morning of pumpkin math. But on math day, everyone got involved. Here are some photos of what we did:

Isaac and Lily began by measuring their pumpkin and estimating how many seeds we'd find inside. Then, we cut it open and began cleaning it out.

It wasn't long before everyone came to participate in the mess.

Lizzy liked the pumpkin slime!

We counted the seeds- there were 448! After we counted them, we roasted them.

I wasn't sure that anyone would eat the seeds, but I was WRONG! They ate all 448 in about 3 hours. Needless to say, they were a big hit.