This is the time of year to scoop up pumpkins at super low prices. Not only can you cook the pumpkin for recipes (it's delicious in quick breads, soups, muffins and cakes, not to mention pies!) but the seeds are healthy, fun and useful for lots of fun activities with kids.
Here's a few ways to use the seeds in your homeschool...
- Graphing: Give each child a piece of construction paper, a marker, a glue stick and a pile of pumpkin seeds. Have the kids think up their own polling question (examples: What's your favorite season? Do you like pumpkin pie?), preferably with a limited number of possible answers. Have them pose the question to friends and family (or you can post it on Facebook or message lists to get lots of answers quickly) and log the results. Then have them make a bar chart of the answers, gluing pumpkin seeds to represent the numbers for each category.
- Cooking: Kids can toast clean, dried pumpkin seeds and create their own delicious flavors. Have them toss 1 1/2 cups of pumpkin seeds with 2 tablespoons of melted butter or olive oil. Mix well, and then spread on a cookie sheet. Sprinkle liberally with seasonings, spices, salt and whatever they can dream up. My daughter made up three flavors: garlic and salt, cajun (with salt and cajun seasoning) and a sweet mix of cinnamon, sugar, nutmeg and ground cloves. Bake at 300, stirring occasionally, for about 45 minutes or until light golden brown.
- Math: Use pumpkin seeds for math manipulatives (to solve addition and subtraction problems, for instance) and to illustrate math concepts. Challenge the kids to see how many ways they can divide 20 pumpkin seeds evenly (4x5, 2x10 and so on) and then try a prime number like 13. You can also have them guess which numbers will have more piles -- 12 or 21? 6 or 7? 14 or 15? It's a great way to illustrate factors and reinforce multiplication basics.
- Art: Put pumpkin seeds in several disposable dishes and drizzle with tempera paint. Stir to coat and let dry in a single layer on waxed paper or another nonstick surface. Have the kids draw a simple picture on a piece of sturdy paper or cardstock, and then glue the colored seeds onto the picture.
- Science: Grow pumpkin seeds in plastic baggies. Give each child a paper towel, a few pumpkin seeds and a ziplock bag. Have the kids dip the paper towel in water, gently squeeze out the excess and fold it to fit in bag. Place pumpkin seeds on top of the paper towel and seal the bag. Tape the bag to a sunny window or pin it to a bulletin board and check the seeds daily (add water to the bottom of the bag as needed, the paper towel will wick it up).
Pumpkin seeds can be fun for little ones too. Give toddlers a dish of seeds and several scoops and small cups. Pumpkin seeds are also fun in homemade playdough. They add a neat, bumpy texture when they're mixed in and are also fun to decorate on the top of playdough creations.
Want more ideas on how to use pumpkin seeds for teaching? This site has lesson plans to use them for concepts like estimation, skip counting and averages.
Have fun!
