Pumpkin Geography

During the month of October, I take advantage of the pumpkin harvest to bring hands-on geography to my students. After spending a month becoming familiar with the location of the seven continents and the major bodies of water, each student is given a pumpkin to turn into a globe. Students paint the entire surface of the pumpkin blue to represent water. Next, they use pushpins to position and trace the outline of each continent onto their pumpkins. They use actual globes as models and are careful to place the continents in the correct hemisphere. Then they paint and label each continent a different color. They label the major bodies of water and use white paint to represent the North and South Poles. While they work on their globes, I take pictures using the digital camera. We complete this project by importing the pictures and adding text on the computer to make a class book titled 'Pumpkin Geography,' which we all enjoy enormously.

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