Pumpkin Investigation

We decided on Halloween morning, to make things festive and do a little 'Pumpkin Science' I found a number of little sheets online that had the kids do a variety of different activities. First, they drew pictures of what their pumpkins looked like to them. It was so interesting to see the different interpretations from each child.

Then we measured how many blocks our pumpkins were tall.

We counted how many stripes were on our pumpkins.

 I asked all three kids if they thought the pumpkins would sink or float in water. I to "sinks" and 1 "float" from my Ice Princess. She, of course, was correct. Then we went on to discuss the concept of density and predicted what they thought was the reason that the pumpkins floated.

At last, we cut those little buggers open to see if we were right. The air surrounding the guts inside kept the pumpkin afloat. So then we cleaned them out and counted the seeds. 

 Tonka and I sorted the slimy seeds into groups of ten and then counted by 10's to find out how many seeds we had. We came up with 91 seeds in our tiny little pumpkin! Ice Princess had 135 and Cowgirl counted 135 as well.

Then my smartie pants Cowgirl asked if the pumpkins would float if we filled the hollow spot with water. We didn't think so, but when we tried it, it did. Hmm? Wow! Ok, so I'm guessing that the pumpkin 'flesh' must have some air pockets as well. Live and learn, Mom!