Pumpkin Fun

I feel badly that it is already November and I am just now getting around to sharing about our pumpkin math! Last week we had a very short week as we missed school on Monday for parent/teacher conferences.  Then we had a fun filled field trip to the zoo.  So in all we were only in class for 3 days...the week of Halloween!!  So I found myself asking, what can I do to keep these kiddos busy during a very different week.  I went to my tried and true sources for some ideas.

I love using Sunny Day's Pumpkin Science investigation!  You can find it here:
Pumpkin Science Investigation

I also love Abby's Pumpkin Activities from The Inspired Apple. You can get them here:
Inspired Apple's Pumpkin Stuff

The kids have such a great time with all of these activities.  They kept us busy for our 3 days and the kids were engaged and excited!

The other day in my browsing of Facebook, I came across this video posted by Box Tops for easily counting 100 box tops.

Post by Box Tops for Education.

I loved the video and immediately shared it with our wonderful PTO who spend so much time counting our box tops for our school.  Then the video got me thinking.  How could I use this for counting other things.  So I made a file folder that looked like this for each of my pumpkin groups:

They were very easily able to line the pumpkin seeds up in the boxes to begin counting by 100's.  I gave each group a large sandwich bag and told them to begin counting by 100's.  When they could no longer fill the grid, I told them to raise their hands and I brought around small snack bags and had them continue to count by 10's.  Then, when they couldn't complete a ten anymore, they set the leftover ones to the side.  Then they were able to easily count by 100's, 10's, and 1's!  It was also much more manageable for both the kids and me!  I highly recommend it!

Now thanks to the election we are now in the throws of teaching government.  So much fun! 

Until next time!