Pumpkin Pound Station

My K's and 1's are have had a blast this last week working at this station called Pumpkin Pound.  I found this wonderful idea on a post on the blog called Scrumdilly-do.  I had to give it a try.  I found the hammers at Walmart for $1.50 ish.  The golf tees came in a 30 or 40 pack for a couple bucks too.  Just the right price for this station.

Students used pliers to get the tees out of the pumpkins.  This worked better the more times the pumpkin was 'pounded'.  At the start, I had to help out with the removal of the tees... it was hard for these students little hands.

In the middle of this project we had a long break so out when the pumpkins (so they didn't rot in my classroom) and in came the squash.  I ended up liking this a lot better.  I divided the squash in half and they didn't 'run away' from the kids.  There was also a really cool discovery of tees through the back end of the squash.

There wasn't much left of the squash after these kids were done with them.

One thing that had to be added after watching the kids work for a while was safety goggles.  These were a hit!  The students were excited to dress for the work at this station.

Here is the video I had created for station instruction.  I have found that by teaching it one or two days, I get the kinks worked out and I can use kids instead of having my face on every one of these station videos. Win/Win!