Watermelons

We are always looking for fun holidays to celebrate with our preschoolers. One of the holidays we chose this year was WATERMELON DAY! For those of you who don't know...watermelon day is August 3rd! We celebrated by bringing in a huge watermelon. The children in my class passed it around and each got a chance to hold it to see how heavy it was. We each took a guess to see what the watermelon weighed. We had some funny answers (ex. 64 pounds....500 pounds...1 million pounds) i let the children put it on the scale to see for themselves. They got to read the number from the digital scale... turned out to be 19lbs (not 1 million!!!)

Supposedly watermelons float...we tested this theory. Each child wrote their name on a watermelon card and we put it on our sink or float chart. We had a good mix of sink and float votes. When we actually tried the experiment ( i think the Tupperware container I used was too small ) the watermelon sank but then we cut it up and the smaller pieces floated along with the seeds.


At our science table I set out 3 big sensory bins filled with water and added pieces of watermelon and watermelon seeds to our usual sink and float items (magnets, rocks, rubber duckies etc.) The children loved experimenting with the watermelon pieces.

In the sensory table i put large pieces of watermelon, hammers and golf tees. The children loved hammering into the watermelon, picking out the seeds and squeezing it between their fingers.

At the table I put out small plastic knives and chunks of watermelon for the children to cut up and eat. They just loved this. The watermelon was very easy for them to cut up (I've done this before with apples and it is much harder)

We then made a watermelon craft using paper plates, red and green paint and the watermelon seeds that we salvaged.

What a good day! And our whole room smelled like watermelon!!!