Carve out time to learn about pumpkins

We’ve been highlighting books on spiders and skeletons, so this post will continue the autumn theme by highlighting a few books about pumpkins. After all, what's a Halloween display without a glowing pumpkin to greet trick-or-treaters? Sure, there's sticky goo that has to be scooped out before etching triangle eyes and a toothy grin, but it beats trying to find an extension cord to plug in a synthetic jack-o-lantern. 

Gail Gibbons provides a classic book for this topic with The pumpkin book. Recognized by the International Reading Association as one of its Teachers' Choices for 2000, this book continues to be a great resource for both scientific and cultural information about pumpkins. The life cycle of the pumpkin is depicted through text as well as cartoon-style (but labeled) drawings. Connections with Halloween and Thanksgiving are included in the narrative, including a drawing of that quintessential carved pumpkin. The final page has short excerpts about historical, scientific, and cultural aspects of pumpkins, as well as directions for drying pumpkin seeds.

Speaking of seeds, a good read-aloud story about pumpkin seeds is Margaret McNamara’s How many seeds in a pumpkin? This 2007 fictional book, also recognized as a Teachers' Choices selection, tells the story of students in a first grade classroom who are predicting the number of seeds in small, medium, and large pumpkins. The students scoop out the seeds and count them by grouping in twos, fives, and tens, which makes this book a resource for easily integrating math with science. After all the seeds have been counted, the teacher explains some clues that his students can use for predicting the number of seeds, such as the color, species, and number of lines, indicating that it’s not just the size  of the pumpkin alone. Spoiler alert: The smallest pumpkin winds up having the most seeds. “Charlie’s Pumpkin Facts” at the end includes some facts about pumpkins, such as the time needed to progress from seed to fruit.

Finally, Pick, pull, snap! Where once a flower bloomed by Lola M. Shaeffer (2003) is a lift-a-flap book that overtly makes the connection between flowers and fruit. The writing style of this book is vivid and succinct, resulting in its recognition by the National Council of Teachers of English as a Notable Children's Book in the Language Arts. Each page spread has three to five richly descriptive sentences about one type of flower (“On a sandy hill, yellow blossoms open on knee-high plants, spilling soft pollen between petals”). The subsequent fruit is shown under the flap, like a mystery unveiled, and the text for each identified fruit ends with “… where a flower once bloomed.” Up-close paintings accurately portray the seeds and flowers, and children are depicted picking each resulting fruit: pea pods, raspberries, corn, peaches, peanuts, and pumpkins. The end pages include additional information about each fruit shown in the book as well as factual information about plant pollination and fertilization. A glossary includes words that are in the text of the book, such as “pollen,” and words that are in the end pages about plant fertilization, such as “anther” and “stamen.”

These are just some of the resources available for finding out about the life cycle of the pumpkin. Knowing about their life cycles may help you appreciate those slimy seeds and strings when you are carving! I'll have one carved with triangle eyes, but if you are the Martha Stewart type and want something more creative, you can check out her templates here.  

Spring Planting...

What image comes to mind when think of when you hear the word "farmer?" I'll admit - when I hear "farmer," I picture a man with a pitchfork in overalls, standing in his field monitoring the rows of corn. Planting the Wild Garden (Galbraith, 2011), which we found at the IRA Convention, challenges that image with the first page spread, as the author writes:

"A farmer and her boy plant their garden. They drop seeds - tiny, fat, round, and oval - into the earth.... In the wild meadow garden, many seeds are planted too, but not by farmers' hands."

 

In this NSTA Outstanding Science Trade Book and  Growing Good Kids Book Award winner, wind, rain, streams, animals, and unsuspecting people are also carriers of seeds, and these and other types of seed dispersion are beautifully depicted through the large illustrations supported by smaller frames within the book. The text of the book makes it an easy and engaging read-aloud or independent read, with certain verbs bolded and purposefully oriented to  match the action. 

For a companion book about different kinds of seeds, try A Seed is Sleepy by Dianna Aston (2007). This is another Growing Good Kids award winner. Each page spread focuses on one aspect of seeds, such as "A seed is fruitful," and in smaller font, additional information is provided. The only reason this book is not ideal for an independent read by primary students is the font of the primary sentence on each page - unfortunately, the main text is written in cursive, though the supporting details are in a readable print-type font. However, as a read aloud for adjectives about seeds, this book is easily paired with the verb-rich Wild Garden book.

We had the privilege of meeting Dianna at IRA in 2007, and were enchanted by the story of how the title her first book of this kind, An Egg is Quiet, came about. (You'll have to ask her if you ever run into her...I'm not sure we could do the story justice!) She has continued in this vein of writing with A Butterfly is Patient, and her 2012 book, A Rock is Lively. which both follow a similar format with excellent up-close details in the illustrations.