Last October I had purchased a small, ordinary, non-organic pumpkin for my first grade classroom. I did the usual estimation math lessons--how much did it weigh, how many seeds, etc. Then in November we were working on our Social Studies unit of Long Ago and Today so we were baking down the pumpkin to make pumpkin muffins for our Thanksgiving Friendship Feast. I posed my usual question about eating seeds and roasting the pumpkin seeds, something I've done for the past few years. Well, this year I was blessed with a very inquisitive group of students who begged me to save some seeds to plant in the spring. Thus, this project was born.
In May I was reminded of the seeds by the students (which I had forgotten about) which is another testament of their inquiring minds. So...we discussed all the questions I had about the experiment about seeds from a non-organic pumpkin which as a member of the squash family cross germinate in fields possibly with other members of the squash family:
- Will the seeds germinate?
- Will the seedlings grow?
- Will the plant flower?
- Will the flower go to fruit?
- Will the fruit be a pumpkin?
Well...we had a successful germination 21 out of 22 seed cups sprouted! Great! First question answered but that left 4 more questions and it was the end of the school year. So...I asked if anyone would be willing to donate their seedling to my garden in the name of science and 9 brave first grade scientists agreed.
Here are the seedlings that I took home for the summer and continuation of our science lab. The high heat combined with my being on bed rest post oral surgery wasn't a good combination and unfortunately only 5 seedlings remained to be planted into the garden. Now that I am sufficiently recovered I have transplanted the seedlings into a garden bed saved for this purpose and now we wait to see what will happen next...to be continued.
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