Center Focus

Pumpkin Volumes

  1. You will need several pumpkins for this center.
  2. Challenge your kids to find the volume of the pumpkin shell, just the outside rim of the pumpkin, not the hollow part.
  3. They should work together in small groups to devise a plan. You can guide them through it by leaving instructions and/or hints, or you can let them discover it on their own.
  4. They will most likely figure out that they need to find the volume of the whole pumpkin based on the radius, and then subtract the inside volume. They can find the inside volume by filling the pumpkin with water and then measuring the water.
  5. One thing you will want to tell them is the following:

    1 dm3 = 1 liter