How Many Seeds in a Pumpkin?

While scouring the shelves of the library for some books to read, I found a book entitled "How Many Seeds in a Pumpkin?" by Margaret McNamara. I picked it up and added it to my growing pile of books. We read it and thus began a fun filled week with pumpkins.

The story began with three pumpkins, a small one, a medium sized one and a large one. The teacher of a class had the kids guess how many seeds they thought would be in the pumpkin. Of course, they thought the big one would have the most and the small one would have the least, however, after cutting into the gourd they found that the small one really had more. How can this be? Well, we learned some interesting facts about pumpkins:

-For each line on the outside, there is a row of seeds on the inside. That means that a small pumpkin that has been on the vine for a long time will have more lines--and thus more seeds than a larger one.

--The longer the pumpkin grows the darker orange it becomes.

--Eat the seeds, roasted of course, they contain lots of vitamin A.

--Save some seeds and plant them in the spring, after the ground warms up.

--It will take about four monthss for a pumpkin to grow to full size. So plant your seeds by June if you want a pumpkin for Halloween. (I planted at the end of June and this was too late. Next year we'll plant at the beginning of the month. However, not in May, that is too early)

We, too, made guesses as to how many our homegrown pumpkins held....and then plunged in to find out who's estimation was the closest.

Oooey gooey

Even though Halloween was over, they couldn't resist making them into Jack o lanterns.

I wonder how many seeds there are? We all guessed that the biggest one really did have the most.....but looks can be deceiving.

I then went to work to clean the seeds, salt and roast them (can't let all that good vitamin A go to waste). Once they were done we made sure to keep each seeds separate to ensure an accurate seed count. A few days later we pulled them out and got ready to count!

Liam practiced counting to 10 by 1's and 2's. Delaney practiced counting by 5's and 10's. She also was challenged in counting above 200, which we've never really done.

And the winner is.....Mom!! ( I didn't make a first guess until after the pumpkins had been cut into, so mine doesn't really count, So Connor, you're the winner!!

And yes, our largest pumpkin (638) did have the most seeds, however, the smallest one was next in the seed count at 501. The medium sized pumpkin came in last at a measly 378 seeds.

We parlayed this fun activity with our history. We've been reading about the Pilgrims and their voyage upon the Mayflower to the Americas. We read about how the Indians helped them by teaching them how to plant food--about the 'three sisters'--corn, beans and squash. We read other books about the foods that various tribes throughout the north american contenient. Most of them relied upon corn, beans and squash. So, we decided to have an impromptu Indian dinner of pueblo pumpkin (fresh pumpkin cubes and cooked with onions, corn, ham, ginger, salt and pepper) along with Indian fry bread. Liam couldn't resist and wanted to help pat out the bread dough.

Here we are gathering our small puny pumpkins...We didn't have a bumper crop this year, but we did have fun experimentating with them. Next year, well start them a little sooner and see if we can get them to be bigger (and more of them) Actually, we're going to experiment with their planting and try planting them as the Indians did, in hills and with the corn and maybe some pole beans.