Monday morning was the pumpkin patch day at school. Every year, the parent advisory committee brings in 800 pumkins and scatters them all over our back field. The kids all then go out and pick their pumpkin, to be used to all manner of activities in the classroom.
In our room, we wrote about our pumpkins, we measured our pumpkins, we weighed our pumpkins, we drew our pumpkins, and we drew ON our pumpkins. No carving. Nooooo carving. Twenty 6 and 7 year olds with knives? Nuh-uh, not gonna happen. We did, however, have a carving demonstration hosted my moi with our class pumpkin. SO FUN! I got to totally gross the kids out with 'pumkin brains.' Heeheehee!
So one lesson, we were brainstorming describing words to complete the sentence "My pumpkin is..." and the kids were coming up qll kinds of creative words. We then completed the sentece "My pumkin is not..." and one kid said "alive."
"Well, that's true. Our pumpkins aren't alive anymore."
"They were alive before?"
"Well yes..." at which point I launched into a teachable moment about where pumkins come from, that they are a plant, and that all plants are alive until you pick them. "Just like flowers."
So of course, you can tell the wheels are turning and one boy looks up with wide eyes and asks, "So we killed our pumkins?!?"
Uhhh...
"Well, yes, but that's what they're for!" Killing. Pumpkins are for killing. Good one, Hillary.
You can bet that every kid wrote, "My pumpkin is DEAD." in their descriptions. My pumpkin is big, orange, and DEAD." Well, ok, not EVERY kid. There was that one grade two girl who put her hand up to ask, "Miss Hillary, how do you spell 'sexy?' "
Whaaa?!?!
"Sweetie, your pumpkin isn't sexy. Choose a different word."
8 comments:
But maybe her pumpkin was sexy. Did you see it? ;)
I decided to take the plunge and sign up for NaBoPloMo. -But it says I have "No friends!" Please be my friend so I don't look so pathetic! Lol!
Oh and good job with the pumpkin lesson.
"What did you do in school today Billy?"
"Murdered pumpkins."
;)
Oh, I'm sure she was quoting an Austin Powers movie: "Dead Sexy" and didn't know what the meaning really is...hahaha! kids are great :)
Awesome story to kick off your month of NaBloPoMo-ing (I love turning nouns into verbs!) You'll probably have no trouble coming up with stuff to write with all that good material coming out of your students! :D
By the way, I noticed you're not on the blogroll at the NaBlo site yet--be sure to click on "Blogroll" at the top of the page and follow the directions to get linked! :D
LOL! This post was hilarious. The old maxim holds - "Kids say the darndest things." I particularly like the little girl who thinks her pumpkin's sexy. That should make for an interesting parent-teacher conference!
Thanks for commenting on my blog - it's always great to hear from new people!
Can you hear my guffaw from Oklahoma? Nice start to my day--you murderer of sexy pumpkins, you.
So that's what pumpkins are for! LOL.
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