Count the Pumpkin Seeds

Date: 17^th June 2014

Day: Tuesday

Time: 4:00-5:00pm

Class: Starfruit

Theme: Yummy, Yummy Food

Teacher: Teacher Yeong

Count the Pumpkin Seeds

After the children had dug out all the seeds from the pumpkin, I washed the seeds clean and dried them under the sun.

Today, we shall count and see how many pumpkin seeds are there. I get the children to predict the number. Some of them gave me a very big number such as a thousand, a million. However, I asked them to give a more reasonable one.

So, they started giving numbers such as 24, 25, 21, 26, 29 etc. So I also gave my prediction as 50. The children were curious of my guess but they still insisted with their own guesses.

In order to know the numbers of seeds in a pumpkin, I had randomly divided the pumpkin seeds into 4 bowls. At the same time, I also divided the children into 4 small groups about 3-4 person in each group with a bowl of pumpkin seeds. I told the children to put 5 seeds in a group. Most of them could follow and do accordingly while some needed some guidance.

After the children had arranged the pumpkin seeds neatly on the table, we started to count how many groups are there in 5. Surprisingly, there were about 49 groups with some loose pumpkin seeds. I did the sum for the children and we got about 245.

The children were amazed with the numbers of seeds in the pumpkin. We shall do some activity with the pumpkin seeds.

Today, I gave 3 pumpkin seeds to each of the children for them to bring home as some of them wanted to plant it.