pumpkin seed measuring

We are in the middle of planting seeds and growing thing.

And my student teacher, Miss Jane, decides that seeds are not just for planting - they are for measuring.

Pumpkin seeds, to be exact, are good for measuring.

The kids' first task was to use the seeds to measure a glue stick.

Even non-standard measurement can be standardized. Miss Jane and the students  agreed that the pumpkin seeds needed to be touching ends and that they all needed to be used length wise so that our measurement was accurate.

Next measuring task was a pencil.  A bit more tricky since our pencils are not the same length.  We realized that they would have different numbers of pumpkin seeds. 

One friend needed to measure the perimeter of his pencil.

Our student teacher introduced pumpkin seed rulers.  Click on the photo to print a copy of the rulers.

At 10 pumpkin seeds long, it made for much faster measuring than individually placing pumpkin seeds.

The kids found interesting things in the classroom to measure.

Olivia is 9 pumpkin seeds long.

I loved how the stick measurer used both the pumpkin seed ruler and the individual pumpkin seeds.

Measuring the dinosaur was a three person co-operative effort.

More perimeter work.

The kids recorded their measurements on this handout created by Miss Jane.  Click on the photo to download a copy.

I usually do some non-standard measurement activities in the fall (with pumpkins, believe it or not!). Click [here] to see what we do in the fall - and get our free printables.

It was fascinating to see how the kids responded with greater curiosity and sophistication (in a kindergarten sort of a way) to similar activities.

Thanks for the learning fun, Miss Jane.