Pumpkin Globes

We've been making some sort of globe with our third graders for years. Usually it has been paper mache. Last year my teammate came up with the idea of doing a pumpkin globe. No cutting a million strips of paper? No blowing up 26 balloons? No messy paper mache paste? I was excited to try it! It was a great concept and worked well but some started to rot before we were finished with the project. This year we still liked the idea of the pumpkin but used the "fake" craft pumpkins instead. These little ones were Buy One, Get One Free at AC Moore earlier this month so they ended up being $2.00 each. The kids painted them blue, colored the continents, added the Prime Meridian and Equator yarn lines and placed the continents. We glued them with glue dots. Here is the result: Kids started singing, "I"ve Got the Whole World in My Hands" while I was snapping pictures!

The process of placing the continents where they needed to be in relation to each other was a great review. Plus they make great study tools!