While pumpkins are an iconic symbol in the classroom that represent fall, harvest time, and Halloween, they are also an ideal subject for teaching elementary students the fundamentals of scientific inquiry and plant decomposition. In a second-grade classroom in New York, the mold, mush, and blackening flesh of a decomposing pumpkin creatively demonstrated decomposition for the Halloween hungry, jack-o-lantern obsessed children. Here the authors describe lessons that were developed as part of a unit on the life cycle of plants.
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Type Journal ArticlePub Date 9/1/2009Stock # sc09_047_01_60Volume 047Issue 01