"What's Inside?"
Many of the children have been talking about going to the apple orchards, eating donuts, and going for hayrides. A lot of them were very familiar with pumpkins, as we have them all around our building. I brought one to group time, covered in a sheet, thinking they would have a harder time guessing by only the shape. I was wrong. The children knew what it was, where it came from, and what it looked like. I decided to challenge them a bit more into thinking about pumpkins in s different way.
What's inside this pumpkin?
As a group discussion, a lot of the children were paying attention to what everyone else was saying. A child said, "legos!" and others followed in suit, "a ball, a toy, a tv!" I asked them to think more. I heard more thoughts like, "a tree, another pumpkin, a bug, a spider!"
The children genuinely did not know what was inside, which is what gets me excited about these kinds of explorations. We will continue to talk about their original thoughts to keep them in our minds. I then asked the children to draw their thoughts.
"There's something inside it. Can you open it? Can we color on it? It's a big circle."
"Little pumpkin in there. I find out."
"I dunno what's inside. Maybe a tree."
I plan on continuing the discussion tomorrow as well, adding literature that describes the growth process of a pumpkin. From there, I plan on opening it up and comparing our predictions. Hopefully I will have more to come on this!
