Kindergarteners Get ‘Pumpkin’ to Talk About from STARS

Student Grant Recipients Total: 48

Estimated Award Amount: $397

Our kindergarteners visited Swan Trails Farm this October, enriching their art, reading, and science curriculum. STARS funds contributed to the approximate total cost of $1381 that included 2 district bus expenses, 45 students and 16 parent/guardian chaperone ticket fees, a treat, and a small pumpkin for each of the kindergarteners to bring home.

This field trip gave students a hands-on learning opportunity to investigate pumpkins, connecting to their current science unit of the plant’s life cycle. While at the farm, EE students took a tractor ride to the pumpkin patch, where students could see pumpkins growing on the vine. Out in the pumpkin patch, kindergarteners were sharing with teachers and chaperones their science knowledge of which stage in the life cycle of pumpkins the squash blossoms were. After making their pumpkin observations in the field, students were able to pick their pumpkin to bring home and have it cut right off the vine in front of them.

Visiting the pumpkin patch also helped kindergarteners make connections to what they experienced on the pumpkin fields to what they are reading in the classrooms and at home. Additionally, this will connect to the Kindergarteners first formal art lesson as they will work on a pumpkin painting that will be created with a variety of lines and patterns with oil pastels back in the classroom.

Kindergarteners also got to watch a pig race, explore a hay maze, swim in a cornbox, jump on trampolines and enjoy the small petting zoo.

*Award amounts are estimated until all receipts for project have been collected.