Volunteering in an Elementary Classroom

I volunteered at H.B. Sugg Elementary school. This school is located in Farmville, North Carolina. I have been going to this school for a few weeks for my MATE and READ practicums. The class I have been working with is a first grade class. These students have been learning about Fall and have been doing activities that are related to pumpkins all week. The classroom teacher asked me if I would like to come in and help her with an activity called Pumpkin Math. The teacher bought in a large pumpkin. Each student was given a worksheet. The students were asked to guess how much the pumpkin weighed, how many stripes the pumpkin had, how tall and wide the pumpkin was, and how many seeds were in the pumpkin. The students wrote down their estimates. We measured the pumpkin's width and height using unifex cubes and we weighed the pumpkin using a standard bathroom scale. We counted the stripes on the pumpkin. I then carved the pumpkin as the students talked to their neighbors about their estimations thus far in the activity. After I carved the top off of the pumpkin, the students each received a bowl and were instructed to come to the pumpkin one at a time and get seeds from inside the pumpkin. The students enjoyed putting their hands inside of the pumpkin to find the seeds. After we got all of the seeds out, each student was responsible for counting the seeds in their bowl. I went around and recorded the number of seeds each student had. I then totaled the number of seeds. The students talked about how many seeds they thought were in the pumpkin. We then revealed the total number of seeds. The students then wrote a few sentences about their estimates and the actual results. I enjoyed working with the students for this activity. It is nice to visit a classroom outside of a practicum visit and observe and help the students with their daily activities. When I have my own classroom, activities like Pumpkin Math will be something that I incorporate into my classroom instruction.