Carving a Jack-o-lantern and finding a surprise!

In each class we made a jack-o-lantern.  When opening the big pumpkins we found lots of pumpkin guts, and tons of seeds.  We voted on the shapes we would use to make our pumpkins face.  Each class voted on different shapes (I forgot to take a picture).  After making our faces, we read the book Pumpkin Jack.

The story is about a little boy who has to throw away his jack-o-lantern from halloween. He couldn’t part with it, so he decided to keep it outside in the garden.  He checked on the pumpkin every now and then and watch the changes it went through.  By the end of the story, his old pumpkin grew many other pumpkins (went through the pumpkin lifecycle). He used one of the pumpkins to carve another jack-o-lantern!  His jack-o-lanterns name was Jack. The students in BOTH classes named the jack-o-lanterns that we carved jack also.  They both now live in the Wilkinson garden.  I will try to keep you updated on what changes they go through.

In my many years of carving a pumpkin I have never seen what I saw in the Afternoon pumpkin we were about to carve.  When we opened it up, inside we found four tiny pumpkin plants beginning to grow.  HOW WEIRD!

Below is a close up of the four plants.  The first one was the biggest…leaves and all, the second one had the most roots, the third one had a root that was a bit deformed, and the fourth one was just beginning to grow.  I planted the first two in some soil to see if they will grow.  What a treat to get to see part of the lifecycle of a pumpkin right inside of a pumpkin!