Don’t cut open that pumpkin and scoop out all the goop inside just yet! Take a moment to teach your child a practical lesson in how to make an estimate with one of these pumpkin math activities.
What you need for some fun pumpkin math activities
How Many Seeds in a Pumpkin? (Mr. Tiffin’s Classroom Series)
- a small pumpkin
- a special pumpkin cutter or a knife that is not too sharp
- paper and pencil for recording estimates
- a scoop or large spoon
- a big bowl
- water
- newspaper
- paper towels
- Optional: sheets of paper with grids drawn or printed on them for counting
How to solve pumpkin math problems
You need to prepare your pumpkin for these pumpkin math activities, but once you’ve cut your pumpkin, you can have lots of fun activities. You’ll need to prepare some pumpkin math problems for the kids to solve, and having some pumpkin math worksheets will be very helpful.
It will be helpful (and FUN!) to read some books about pumpkins. Don’t have any? Here is a list of kids favorite books about pumpkins!
Here’s a step by step plan for what to do:
- Have your child hold the pumpkin to get a sense for how heavy it is
- Spread out the newspaper on a tabletop or counter and place the pumpkin on it
- Cut a circle around the stem of the pumpkin and gently pull off the cap
- Let your child peer inside at the seeds
- Explain that an estimate is a guess based on what you observe, or notice by looking closely at something, and what you already know about the thing. Have your child make an initial estimate about how many seeds are in the pumpkin. Record the estimate(s)
- Next, slice out one section of the pumpkin. Scrape the seeds from this section into the bowl, and soak them in water to separate the seeds from the stringy goop. Then have your child count and record how many seeds are in this section.
- Discuss with your child how many sections of this size the pumpkin contains. Then discuss how you can multiply the number of sections by the number of seeds you just counted to make a more precise estimate of the total number of seeds in the pumpkin.
- Compare this second estimate with your initial estimate.
- If you have time, scoop out, soak and separate, pat dry with paper towels, and count all the seeds to find out how close your estimate was. To get an accurate count, you can have your child count seeds out one by one on a grid of small squares that is printed on a sheet of paper. You can also have your child practice skip counting by 2s, 5s, or 10s.
- In the end, don’t let the seeds got o waster. Make roasted pumpkin seeds and enjoy them with your child.
Discussions about your pumpkin math activity
- Estimating is useful when you don’t have time to make an accurate count or when you just need a general idea about how much of something there is.
- Your child might think that bigger pumpkins will have more seeds, but actually sometimes smaller pumpkins have more. The number of seeds inside a pumpkin is determined by the number of lines outside it, so the more lines in a pumpkin’s shell, the more seeds the pumpkin has, regardless of how big or small the pumpkin is.
Save some of your pumpkins to watch the decomposing pumpkin process with the kids: it’s fascinating!
Want even more fun with math? Try some brain riddles and watch your child spend hours having fun with math!
Books About Pumpkins
From Seed to Pumpkin (Let’s-Read-and-Find-Out Science 1)Theme Kit: Pumpkins & Leaves (Preschool)Our Pumpkin (Learn to Read Math Series)
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