Measuring Up

I love pumpkins and all the creative ways you can incorporate them in simple math lessons. Yesterday, after the boys got home from school we did a couple simple math lessons seems I had just remember to take the pumpkins out of the car. First, we estimated which would weigh the most and the less by just looking at them. Then I grabbed a five pound bag of sugar to help them in estimating the weight of each pumpkin. After comparing the weight of the sugar to each of the pumpkins, the wrote down their hypothesizes. We dug out our scale to get an actuate weight. Next we guess if we were about as wide as our pumpkins  After measuring our own waists and measuring  the width of each of the pumpkins, we were proud to say the pumpkins were much wider then us.

Sticking with a measuring theme Jordan help Joey with making pancakes for dinner and the measuring of the ingredients. Strangest thing happened the exacted sized measuring cups they needed seemed to be missing (I wonder where they could have gone...hmmm) and they had to figure out which ones to use as well as how many times they would need to use them. They managed just fine with the little hiccup thrown their way and we had some very delicious pancakes. Although my fork kept disappearing during dinner, they claim to have no clue where they all went...LOL

We also made popcorn balls, again they needed to measure out the ingredients (by this time the all the measuring cups had magically reappeared). Having never made popcorn balls before, it could have turned into an interesting mini adventure. Thankfully it turned out rather uneventful. (Yay, no burnt fingers this time.) We found a recipe that explained about how long to do each step, as we don't have a candy thermometer. They look like popcorn balls, however they are still really gooey three hours later. They were gooey, but good. We were thinking that if they hardened up some we could make them for the cub scout Halloween party we had signed up to bring treats to. 

 
 
 

On a side note, while we had the scale out to weigh the pumpkins we weighed ourselves. Jordan was ecstatic that he has FINALLY passed the 100 pound mark; most of his peers had passed it a few years ago.