How Many Seeds In a Pumpkin? by Margaret McNamara

WOW! I love it when I learn something from reading a storybook. This is one of the many things I love about being an elementary librarian. Today I shared a new story with my 1st graders - How Many Seeds In a Pumpkin? Mr. Tiffen's class is going to count the number of seeds inside of three different pumpkins. Mr. Tiffen puts the three pumpkins out where the students can study them - one big pumpkin, one medium pumpkin and one small pumpkin. When he asks the class to guess how many pumpkins seeds they will find inside the pumpkins he gets answers from 1,000,000 to 22. The next day they come to school prepared to open the pumpkins and find out how many seeds are inside. They now have three empty pumpkins and 3 bowls full of seeds. Mr. Tiffen sends the students home with some "thinking homework". He wants them to think how they can count the seeds. That night Mr. Tiffen dried the seeds so they would be easier to count. The next day they come back and have ideas of how to count the seeds, but agree that Molly's idea of counting by 2's, 5's, and 10's is the best way. They organize by groups and decide how they will count their seeds. The big pumpkin group counts by 2's, the medium pumpkin group counts by 5's and the small pumpkin group counts by 10's. Which pumpkin do you think has the most seeds? Did you know that the number of lines on the outside of the pumpkin tells us how many lines of seeds will be in the pumpkin? I did not know that! I also did not know that the longer the pumpkin stays on the vine the darker the color of the pumpkin. This is a great sharing and exploring book. There is also a list of pumpkin facts in the back of the book. Check it out!