Pumpkin Estimation Activity

One of my favorite activities that we do in the first grade is the pumpkin carving estimation and sequencing activity. Each of the students has the opportunity to estimate how many seeds are inside of the pumpkin. We talk about "reasonable" estimations then I record each of their estimates including the teacher's estimates.

After these are recorded I carve open the pumpkin and remove the seeds. We then work on sequencing  the events of carving a pumpkin and illustrating our words.

We did this as a two-day math activity. It's important to have help with this activity so that an adult can take students 2-3 in the hall and let them sort and count out seeds into groups of 5. While the seeds are being counted and glued down onto a piece of chart paper we work on math. When the pumpkin was ready to be counted as a class we counted aloud all of the groups of 5 and extra seeds to get our total.

We hung it up in the hall for everyone to see when we were finished!

Total Seeds: 343 pumpkin seeds