This morning I volunteered and participated in “Pumpkin Math with Dads,” a great little 1 hour event in Jaden’s kindergarten class. We had five (5) dads there, and each of us brought a pumpkin, some tools, and our time.
The kids split up into groups of 3 to 4 and joined a dad. On our well-protected table, we had some “Record Sheets”, the pumpkin, and our tools. The project was for the dads to work some math with the kids from their Record Sheets, and then have some fun carving the pumpkin up.
First we had the kids write their name on their sheets. This was important and didn’t take near as long as I thought it would. Seems these kids write their names a lot! Sometimes Jaden comes home with his wrist taped up because of all the writing.
The second task was to have the kids estimate how tall the pumpkin was. We had these little blocks that stacked up together and we could use them to measure things. The blocks were a little smaller than an inch tall by my recollection. After a little explanation of what one block looked like, and what five blocks looked like, I had the kids give their guesses. One guessed 9, another guessed 12 and another guessed 20. Actual pumpkin height: 11. So two were very close and one was off by a factor of 2. I tried explaining this factor principle to the kid, but he kept throwing pumpkin seeds at me.
The next task on the list was to estimate how fat the pumpkin was. Personally, to avoid any issues with activists and the oversensitive, I probably would have named the task “guess how wide around the pumpkin is” but what do I know? We used a piece of string to measure around, and then I asked the kids to estimate how many blocks would it take to be the same as the measurement. The kid (mine) who guessed 9 before guessed 10 this time. Evidently the estimation gig is a little beyond him at this moment, given that the pumpkin was clearly about three times wide around as it was tall. I kept asking “are you sure this biiiig looooooongggg string is only one block longer?” but it got lost on him. Another kid guessed 17 and another guessed 13. The actual fatness? 41. 41 fat. I like the sound of that.
Then we needed the kids to estimate the weight, in pounds, of the pumpkin. One immediately guessed a hundred pounds and after he saw my look changed his guess to a more conservative estimate of fifty pounds. One of these kids is barely 50 pounds. My kid is 80. I tried giving some more hints by picking up the fifty pound kid and then picking up the pumpkin and asking “is the pumpkin as heavy as this kid?” They still said “yeah!”. We clearly had some work to do here. I then resorted to food - I told them that a properly made big daddy hamburger was about one pound. How many hamburgers big is this pumpkin? One (mine) estimated one pound. Another estimated 50. And the 3rd estimated 10. The actual weight was 7 pounds.
We chose a design and did the carving. I think our table had the best pumpkin, and that’s not just my paternal and territorial pride talking. I did get sent to the principal’s office, however because they thought my pumpkin was a little “out of bounds” for what the school wants to teach.
I don’t understand what they were so upset about.
