The picture trade book It’s Pumpkin Time! by Zoe Hall [Scholastic, 1994] details how two kids plant pumpkin seeds in the ground and grow their own pumpkin patch. Kindergarten teachers can use the story as the basis for a growing pumpkins science lesson.
How a Pumpkin Grows Science Lesson Objective
Students will create a mobile outlining how a pumpkin grows from a seed.
How a Pumpkin Grows Science Lesson Materials
- It’s Pumpkin Time! By Zoe Hall
- White cardstock
- Dry cleaner shirt hangers with cardboard tubes
- Orange construction paper
- Green masking or painter’s tape
- Glue
- String
- Hole punch
- Colored pencils
Stages of Pumpkin Growth Elementary Science Lesson
To introduce the science lesson about how pumpkins grow the teacher brings in a carved jack-o-lantern for the students. The teacher asks the kids where Halloween jack-o-lanterns come from and record their answers on the front board.
The teacher shows the Kindergarteners the pictures in the book It’s Pumpkin Time! by Zoe Hall and reads the story to the class. The students use the illustrations to review how a seed grows into a pumpkin to be carved into a jack-o-lantern.
Once the students are familiar with the stages of pumpkin growth the teacher passes out white card stock. She demonstrates how to fold the paper in half horizontally and in quarters vertically to form eight squares.
The Kindergarten students use the information in It’s Pumpkin Time! to draw the stages of pumpkin growth in the nine squares. The stages of pumpkin growth illustrated in the story are the planting the seeds in soil, sunshine and water for the seeds, the small plants, the vines, the yellow flowers, the green pumpkins, the yellow pumpkins, and the picking the orange pumpkins.
How to Make a Pumpkin Mobile
- The teacher passes out a hanger to each student to use to make the pumpkin mobile.
- The students cover the top of the hanger with orange construction paper by cutting and gluing a rounded shape that looks like the top of a pumpkin to the hanger making sure to leave the bottom of the hanger free.
- The kids wrap the green tape around the hook of the hanger to represent the pumpkin’s stem.
- The students cut out the pumpkin growth steps they have drawn on the cardstock.
- The teacher helps the Kindergarteners punch holes in the top of each of their steps and tie them in order on the hanger.
- The strings can be secured to the cardboard tube on the hanger with tape so they don’t slide around. The mobiles are then hung around the classroom.
Kindergarten kids can make pumpkin mobiles to demonstrate their knowledge of the stages a seed goes through to become a pumpkin. Teachers use the book It’s Pumpkin Time! by Zoe Hall to teach the students how pumpkins grow. The kids draw the pumpkin stages on cardstock and hang them from the decorated pumpkin mobile.
For more pumpkin themed lessons elementary teachers can read the How Pumpkins Grow Lesson Plan, the Pumpkin Pie Math and Science Cooking Lesson Plan, and Teach Elementary Students about Rhyming Couplets.
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