This is a great activity to do from late October to early November!
I usually start the garden with students in mid-November, but I use this experiment to get them excited about planting.
What you need:
Several containers for planting
A large container is needed toward the end of the experiment
Soilless Mix
A variety of small/ornamental pumpkins and/or squash
(I’ve even used gourds!)
Sharp knife
Water in your watering can
Just after Hallowe’en, we cut the tops off some small pumpkins, a squash and a gourd, left the seeds inside, and filled them with soil, placing them in a dish basin. We also buried some more pumpkins in soil in another dish basin. We kept track of the experiment in our garden journals.
The students made sketches and recorded the experiment in their journals. Then they made their own predictions about what was going to happen.
Within a few days, we had sprouts! As time went on, the pumpkins that were not buried started to soften and rot. Eventually we moved them to a large pail and added soil so that we could continue our experiment. The pail of pumpkin plants kept growing as we planted our garden and in the spring one of the students took the plant home to put in an outdoor garden.
Pictures of Our Experiment
Teaching From the Garden 