Before counting the seeds, there was much work to be done. The students first named their pumpkins. We welcomed, Alice, Steve, Billy-Bob Jo, Amelia Bedelia, Fred, Amy, and Alvin to our classroom!
The students then began to collect QUALITATIVE and QUANTITATIVE data about their pumpkins. Qualitative data is information you can collect using your senses; smell, sight, sound, and touch. Quantitative data is information that names a quantity or a number; for example, we collected information on our pumpkins weight, circumference, and the number of creases.
Time to start counting!!! After a discussion about whether or not our qualitative or quantitative data could help us predict the number of seeds in our pumpkin, we made predictions. Then we got messy!
Finally it was time to start counting the seeds. We had people grouping their seeds into groups of 2, 5, 10, and 20. This lead to a lot of great discussions about counting with large numbers.
