An organization called Uhuru Child grew the pumpkins and brought them into town to sell. The proceeds from the pumpkin sale went to help out with all the great things they do for girls in an IDP camp. These were American pumpkins, so they were orange- a specialty here. The pumpkins here in Kenya are green.
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It was fun to bring the orange pumpkins into the classroom and hear the observations from the kids. Many were excited and curious as to what we would do with such things!
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First of all we started out by describing our pumpkins. Since we were talking about adjectives, and some of our pumpkins had some pretty cool features (green spots, curvy stem, leafy vine) the students were able to really come up with some great describing words.
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Later in the week we weighed (in kgs), found the diameter (in cm), tested to see if they sink or float, found the height, and pondered if a pumpkin is a fruit or a vegetable. Students then took all this information and predicted how many seeds were inside.
Since many of our students haven't ever really looked inside a pumpkin before, the estimates were something like 20 or 30 seeds. They loved digging and feeling the "gross" insides. The actual number of seeds was quite higher than their predictions!
While cleaning up, one of our janitors asked what I would do with the seeds. I explained to him that I'd take them home and bake them. I gave him some to take home too, and he excitedly told me he would try to plant them upcountry and see if the pumpkins would grow up there. The orange pumpkins are quite a novelty!
I did take the seeds home and baked them- the kids loved it! They wanted more and more.
Plus, I baked one of the pumpkins to get the pumpkin insides to bake pumpkin bread. (We don't have canned pumpkin in our stores.) It was great! Definitely a first, and more time consuming, but worth it.
Click here to watch a video of all the fun! Enjoy!
