– Mathoween 2006 –
A Mathematical Cornucopia of Pumpkins
Every year Carlson celebrates the importance of mathematics with its unique Mathoween event. Donnette Durham's fifth-grade students planned and led our 2006 Mathoween. Taking their inspiration from Glenn Gebhard's article "A Mathematical Cornucopia of Pumpkins" in the September 2006 isssue of Teaching Children Mathematics, they focused the schoolwide event on pumpkins and measurement. Each grade level (K-5) set up an activity that used pumpkins to illustrate a concept of measurement. The pictures below, with captions written by fifth-graders, show some of the highlights of our 2006 Mathoween.
Anissa is playing Meredith's kindergarten class's game (Pumpkin Patterns). She makes an AABBCCDD pattern out of different small pumpkins, while Romie and Florie are observing how to play the game and are waiting for their turn. (Caption by Emma and Grace)
Here you can see Sarah and she really has the Mathoween spirit. She was a calculator and her costume was like no other. Everyone else was in their Halloween costumes, but Sarah made this one for this math occasion. (Kyla)
This is Jordan at the fourth grade booth called "Cubing Pumpkins". He is building a cube box around the pumpkins. Jordan is trying to find the volume of the box for the pumpkin to fit. (Dominique and Nathan)
Here is Marshall slowly submerging a pumpkin under water and InHo is catching the displaced water at the fifth grade booth. The 5th grade booth was called "measuring the volume of pumpkins". (Carlos and Brian)
This poster is one of the many pumpkin fact posters. The authors of this poster are two 5th grade girls named Florie and Anissa. This poster was decorated by Graysen C. and Rubi. In the background are pumpkins and hay for the Mathoween decorations. (Florie, Anissa, Dakota, Chase, and Penelope.)

A father and son are playing a game called "Silly Pumpkin Measure" where you learn how to count and measure the pumpkins.

At Jeannie's booth, Turner and Israel estimate the number of seeds in a big and small pumpkin. They wrote their estimate and placed it in the box.
These are some students in Spiderman and skeleton costumes playing Gracie's class's game. You make patterns with pumpkin shapes. They seem to be using triangles and hexagons.
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