They also get to practice making comparisons and drawing conclusions. Comparing pumpkin mass using a balance scale.Īt this station, students get hands-on practice using balance scales. I also encouraged them to label important features. I allowed my students to use colored pencils and add detail to their diagrams. Tell students to be thorough because you'll be asking them to find their pumpkin using only their notes later in the week.Įven if you don't get around to doing this later, it is a great way to get students to be really detailed about their pumpkin's physical appearance. Ideally, you'll want to select the pumpkins that are most similar to include in this station to make it a little more challenging for students and to ensure they focus on the small details of their pumpkin.Įach student will select one of the pumpkins at this station and record its physical properties using their 5 senses. This station has students drawing diagrams of different pumpkins. Observing & recording physical properties What are each of the Pumpkin Science stations? 1. The five stations can be done as rotations, so we also had a conversation about finding the right page for each station before you begin because you might not go in order. I've discovered that one staple at the bottom corner makes it easier for students to spread their pages out to write. These are easy to cut out and put together, and students can color them if they have time. Instead of using their science notebooks, which can get messy from these experiments, I have my students create their pumpkin science tab book. This makes it easy for me to review and helps students move easily from station to station. I like to have my students keep all their data in one place. However, I typically run the stations concurrently so that we finish these experiments in a single day. This would allow you to monitor and rotate with students who might need additional support. If you've got a group that needs lots of teacher direction, you may want to run 2-3 stations one day and the others on a different day. Decide how you'll implement the stations.ĭepending on your class and how many pumpkins you get, you may decide to set up these experiments in a variety of different ways. Once you've got all your pumpkins, number or letter them to make it easier to keep track. If you plan to do this on Halloween or near the end of October, many places would be happy to give you the pumpkins for free or at a discount just to clear them out. When asking parents for donations, give at least a week of advance notice to get the best results.Īlternatively, you may consider checking in with your local grocery store or pumpkin patch about making a donation. Just write a short note explaining what you need or enter your name and email to access this free version I've created. Since you'll be using a number of pumpkins in these activities, consider asking parents to donate pumpkins. However, you could make it work with fewer pumpkins if needed. I like to get about 10 of the small pumpkins, 2 medium pumpkins, and a large pumpkin. Get the pumpkinsįor these experiments, you'll need a variety of sizes of pumpkins. The following steps should be done before beginning these pumpkin experiments with students. How to prepare your pumpkin STEM stations exploring volume and water displacement.strategies for addition, subtraction, and multiplication.generating predictions & testing hypotheses.observing and recording physical properties of matter.measuring width, height, and circumference using customary & metric measures.The students practice a number of different math and science skills including: ![]() This gives students more opportunities to get hands-on rather than just observing. There are a total of five activities included in my pumpkin science plans so that I can put my students into small groups and rotate through all the stations. What skills will students be practicing through the pumpkin STEM activities?
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