Cooking in the Classroom: How to Make Pumpkin Muffins from Scratch

My students last year blew me away with their teamwork and responsibility during our cooking activities!  We grow a Three Sisters Garden as part of our curriculum, and after we had harvested the garden, it was time to use all of that great produce.  The kids brainstormed different foods they could make using our pumpkins, and voted on which recipe to make. 

Click here to download the recipe we used.

Here's the step-by-step of how we made pumpkin muffins from scratch -- in the classroom!

1.  Cut each pumpkin in half.  Use your hands or a spoon to scoop out the seeds and stringy bits.

2. Separate the seeds and rinse them.  Set them aside so you can roast them later.

3.  Once your pumpkin is nice and clean, place it cut-side down on a foil-lined baking sheet.  Roast at 375 degrees Fahrenheit for 1 1/2 hours, or until tender.

4.  Allow the pumpkin to cool, then scoop out the flesh and discard the rind.

***At this point, you can puree it in a food processor or blender to make it smoother.  We chose to keep ours chunky.***

5.  Gather your ingredients!  I set up one table in the classroom for ingredients.  I taped an index card with the name of the ingredient and the quantity needed for the recipe down to mark where on the table each item belonged.  I also placed the appropriate measuring cups and spoons next to each ingredient.

 6.  Make a plan.  I projected our recipe on the SMARTboard, and we discussed the ingredients, measuring tools, and directions as a class.  Then each table got a paper copy of the recipe.  They had to decide who was going to be responsible for each ingredient and for completing each step, and write out their plan on the recipe before they could begin cooking.

 7.  Start cooking!

One student marks off on the recipe as the group completes each step.

An adult helps crack eggs into a small bowl before they are added to the batter.

Because we were making a very large quantity of muffins (120+), we used Reynolds baking cups that could stand on their own.

We had to be careful not to spill the batter as we arranged our muffin cups on the baking sheet!

8.  Bake and enjoy!

We had prepared and cooked the pumpkins on one day, then mixed and baked the muffins the next day.  We also shared the muffins with the third grade class, since they were the kids who had planted the pumpkins with me last spring at the end of their year in second grade.

A Summer Obsession

I am currently obsessed with trees.  When I started teaching about plants in second grade, I was flabbergasted by how many of my students couldn't name any of the trees on our playground except for the pines -- and we live in foresty Vermont!

Looking for seeds on our school trail system

Last year I did a tree video project with my class using the Adobe Voice iPad app (now called Adobe Spark).  In pairs, the kids chose a tree on the playground to photograph, used books in the classroom to identify it, and made a video describing its leaves, bark, and seeds.  Three days into the project, one boy came to me very distressed that he couldn't find any "helicopter seeds" around his maple tree.  "All there is is acorns," he complained.  I investigated, and sure enough, there were no helicopter seeds and many, many acorns . . . because his tree was really an oak.

With Voice/Spark, we could take pictures of our trees right in the app, then add captions and voiceovers.

As we move toward Project Based Learning in our district, I am planning to focus my first project around trees.  We have a trail system that connects all of the schools in our district, and my class is going to create a field guide or series of signs to teach hikers about the different species of trees on our trails.  At least, that's my current vision . . . there are absolutely NO field guides designed for emergent or early fluent readers, so we're going to have to get creative and do a lot of hands on and visual explorations to learn about how to identify trees.

Rough, grayish-brown bark, dry sticks left behind where old branches have fallen off.  Any guesses what kinds of trees we have here?

In the meantime, I'm taking lots rambles in the woods, reading lots of field guides, and trying not to drive my family crazy talking about "alternate composite" or "simple lobed" leaves all the time.