Bolles grade one students from the Lower School Ponte Vedra Beach Campus and Lower School Whitehurst Campus gathered for the annual grade-level Pumpkin Drop on Oct. 25.
Ahead of the event, students worked in mixed-campus teams to design and build protective capsules around pumpkins, with the goal of keeping them intact after a three-story drop. The first graders could only choose two of the following materials to engineer their cardboard capsules: packing peanuts, air pillows, foam wrap and bubble wrap.
Each team’s box was tossed from the balcony of the library on the Ponte Vedra Beach Campus while the group gathered to watch from a safe distance. Excited pre-K students also attended the drop event on the heels of a collaborative lesson between science and library, where they learned why pumpkin is a fruit and why it floats and reviewed feelings to carve faces on pumpkins.
While some of the teams successfully kept their pumpkins from breaking, all learned how to work together and cheer on their classmates during this hands-on, seasonal activity.
