Patch Work

A crop of pumpkins is ripe with learning – just getting them back to the classroom is a D&T lesson in itself, say Susan Humphries and Susan Rowe...

Cultivating pumpkins can be a valuable experience for children – the very magnitude of the vegetable compared to the size of the seed make it one of the grandest crops to plant and grow. There are many varieties available: the Hubbard is a reliable cropper, the Hundredweight, as implied, is a whopper, and the turban-shaped Sweet Dumpling can be oven baked with brown sugar.

Our harvests vary each year, but there are things you can do to encourage a successful crop. Pumpkins are a trailing plant and they like mounds, banks or raised beds where they can cascade over the edges or draw themselves upwards. We have grown them on old compost mounds, but growing pumpkins in raised beds (around 75cm high) is more visually spectacular and also produces the best yields. Our beds are made from recycled timber and placed in an open position with plenty of sunlight. They are sturdy enough to allow children to perch around the edges or to climb into the boxes and prepare the soil for planting.

We have used the harvests for adding interest to our maths curriculum. The children order the crop by weight and size, and devise systems for weighing the often very heavy vegetables. They also count the number of seeds in each pumpkin, laying them out in groups of singles, tens and hundreds. The children are always amazed at how many seeds are to be found in one pumpkin. 

In our science and food technology work, the children use the pumpkin crop for making chutneys, soups and pies. The children relish the texture of the flesh at the centre of the pumpkins and compare it with the firmer outer flesh used for cooking, and with the thick and inedible skin. We wash, dry and toast handfuls of the seeds and the children enjoy a pumpkin seed feast together.

We study the use of pumpkins in folk story, legend, rhyme and song from across the world. The children enjoy traditional rhymes such as ‘Peter, Peter, pumpkin-eater’ and reading about Cinderella’s pumpkin carriage. African folklore is rich in tales about pumpkins.

Early Native Americans roasted pumpkin strips over camp fires and the vegetable helped them make it through the long, cold winters. They used the seeds as a medicine and dried pumpkins were ground into flour. Pumpkin shells were dried and used as bowls and storage containers, and strips of the flesh were dried, flattened with stones, and woven into mats that could be traded.

The pumpkin has close associations with Thanksgiving in the USA. An early pilgrim rhyme (from 1633) tells of the pilgrims’ reliance on the pumpkin:

For pottage and puddings and custards and pies
Our pumpkins and parsnips are common supplies.
We have pumpkins at morning and pumpkins at noon,
If it were not for pumpkins we should be undoon.

We help the children to scoop out the flesh from pumpkins and to carve simple faces into the skin. A night light or candle stub is lit inside to make a traditional Thanksgiving pumpkin or Jack o’ lantern. 

One of the children’s favourite stories is Furaira and the Pumpkin – a Hausa tale from Nigeria and Ghana (a version of this can be found on sacred-texts.com) – and we have made simple cardboard shapes of the characters mounted on thin sticks. The adults present a shadow-puppet play each autumn, using a white cotton cloth stretched across a wooden frame and backlit by a spotlight. One adult is the narrator and others behind the screen take the part of Furaira and the pumpkin as it calls out: “Meat I must eat Furaira! Meat I must eat!”

Lifting pumpkins and carrying them safely to the classrooms provides children with an authentic technological challenge that necessitates the invention of stretchers and harnesses. We have a range of materials on hand for the children to use – ropes, blankets, cloths of varying shapes and sizes, wooden poles, trays. The challenge is always for small groups of children to work together and transport one of the heavy vegetables safely and undamaged to the classroom.

We also provide a range of wheeled equipment. Many children use sack barrows etc for the first time and journeys between the harvest site and the classroom are split so pupils can experience as much of the equipment as possible. Comparisons between metal and plastic are encouraged and we ask the children to think about fitness for purpose and relative effectiveness. The whole project is a cooperative venture that is conversation rich and thought provoking for us all.

About the authors

Susan Humphries and Susan Rowe are both former heads at The Coombes School, renown for its vibrant outdoor classrooms and seasonal curriculum.