Pumpkin Inquiry Part 1

We were excited to bring home our own pumpkins from our field trip last week to Morrison Meadows Farm in Bracebridge, ON. On our bus ride home we started our wondering about pumpkins. How do they grow? Do they grow in a field of grass? Our research began by cutting apart our pumpkins and making some observations.

Pumpkin Observations:

I see lots of seeds.

There is orange goo in the pumpkins.

The seeds are whitey and yellowey.

It's slimy.

It's cold and hard.

The pumpkin is orange and bumpy. 

There's 100 seeds.

The pumpkin is a circle.

The stem has lines.

We started documenting our findings right away. We decided that stems must be pretty important to help the pumpkins grow. So, we started investigating other stems that we found outside. 

We collected some stems for some further investigation. We asked questions like: What has stems? What is attached to stems? What do stems do? 

We opened apart some stems to see the inside. Some students noticed how some stems are white inside. Some stems have holes. 

More questions arose like, "how do we know the difference between a root and a stem?". Some kinders explained that roots are in the ground. Together we collaborated our ideas to determine roots are in the ground and stems are near the leaves. 

Stem Experiment

We wondered what stems were for so we tried an experiment with different plants and food colouring. 

Predictions:

The stems will be turn rainbow.

The stem will be a new colour then go back to its old colour.

The stems will die.

They will be different colours.

Observations:

The leaves turned blue. 

The purple is in the stem.

The lines are purple. 

Conclusions:

Stems help the leaves get water. New vocabulary: The stems absorb the water and help transport it to the leaves.

Child-led Exploration

Some kinders decided to try their own experiment inspired by the book, "The Runaway Pumpkin" by Kevin Lewis. They wanted to know if a small or big pumpkin would roll down the hill the fastest. One student timed it on the iPad while the other student did 3 tests. The results were the larger the pumpkin the farther and faster it would roll. 

Our pumpkin inquiry will continue 'student engagement' permitting.