End of the Year Watermelon Day

Watermelon Day is one of the best days in school ever! Your kids are engaged and learning and you are having a blast.  What more could you want?  

Of course Watermelon Day has to be full of watermelon food and drink.  We have watermelon, watermelon juice, watermelon candy and have bubble blowing contests with watermelon bubble gum when possible.  I ask for donations from the parents and we buy as much as the money will purchase for us and sometimes that's just watermelon and rubber bands which is still a blast.

We learn a fun watermelon song by the Biscuit Brothers which you can find by clicking here.  A big warning that the song is a little cheesy and gets stuck in your head!

The best part of our day is our STEM project.  The STEM project tests the limits of force and motion using rubber bands and a watermelon.  You can see the video below.  After doing this lesson for a few years now I have a few suggestions for you.  The first suggestion is to buy your watermelon early so it's nice and ripe when it's time to do the project.  The second suggestion is to buy at least 6 bags of #64 rubber bands. Walmart sells them in the office supply section for around $1.50/bag.  The rubber bands that you use really matter.  You'll want ones that are thicker and stretch the diameter of the fruit.  My next suggestion is to place the rubber bands in the same spot on the watermelon.  In my video my rubber bands are spread out too much and it takes longer.  This brings us to my last suggestion.  Complete the experiment with at least two other adults. This way you can help each other out and switch out when your hands get tired.  If you do it by yourself you will have several blisters on your fingers.  The experiment takes between 1-2 hours.  If your students are younger than 2nd grade you may want to pre-load some rubber bands.

When we are done exploding the watermelon we save the seeds, rinse them off and have a seed spitting contest that turns into a measurement lesson.  With each lesson suggestion here you can tailor them to meet anywhere from kindergarten to high school.  Believe me when I say the adults are having just as much fun as the kids.

We read several different texts during our day.  When I taught first grade we used to read The Watermelon Seed.

In second grade we read Watermelon Day.

 While I was on Amazon it suggested the book below.  It looks like a great book, but I can't tell you for sure because I haven't previewed it.

Aside from all of the fun above, we also have fun with coloring, learning about the history of watermelons and how to pick the perfect watermelon.  Those activities can be found by click the picture below.

Feel free to send me an email if you have any questions!