Before cutting open the pumpkins, I read a tiny section out of the Handbook of Nature Study to the children about pumpkins. They we spent a bit of time looking at the outside of the pumpkins and talking about them. We "clunked" them with our fingers and talked about the sound that it made. We noticed the lines going up the sides of the pumpkins. We identified which side of each pumpkin was on the ground as it grew and talked about how we knew. We looked at the bottom of the pumpkins and noticed the mark in the middle and we looked at the stems. We talked about how pumpkins grow and what they look like when it is time to harvest them.
Since Kevin was home from work in the afternoon, he was enlisted to help us with our activity! He cut the tops of all the pumpkins with a big knife.
Getting all of the stringy goo and seeds out of the pumpkins was quite the task. While Amber and Mason did a great job - the inside of the pumpkin was just too gross for little Duncan so I scraped out his pumpkin.
Before we started removing all of the insides, we talked about why the pumpkins are filled with stringy goo. We talked about how the pumpkin is mostly hollow inside and we noticed that the inside of the pumpkin has different sections. We took time to smell the inside of the pumpkin and talked about the smell. 
We sorted out all of the seeds and roasted them. Everybody tried the roasted pumpkin seeds except Duncan.
The rest of the time was spent carving the pumpkins as the children wished. I purchased three pumpkin carving kits at Super Wal-Mart for 1.00 each and they were a good purchase. The little jagged carving tools allowed even my youngest to carve his pumpkin with success. The kit also included a flat scraper which was quite useful for removing the insides of the pumpkins.
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