Pumpkin Life: Show Not Tell

 As my students continued to practice the concept of Show Not Tell in their writing, they became a personified pumpkin a couple of weeks before Halloween.  Their job was to write a story about the last day of their life, with an emphasis on Show Not Tell writing styles.  How would it feel to be carved?  Baked?  Dropped?  Forgotten?  My students did such an amazing job with this that one of my students said, "I will never carve a pumpkin ever again after this assignment!  I feel too bad!"

Enjoy these entertaining stories!

My Story, by Lucas (3rd grade)

        Hi, my name is Desert Horn Viper, and I am a happy, big, round, green pumpkin.  I have a story to tell you about my last day of my life!

        Today is Halloween, and the craziest thing happened earlier today.  First, Michaela carved into my top, and I felt fierce.  Next, SCRAAAAAPE!  A mean person scooped my seeds out.  I looked at them, and they were disgusting.  I saw goo and seeds all over the plate!  Then, someone started to carve a hole in my right eye and then my left eye.  He carved a nose and mouth as well.  I got to finally see everything! Meow.  I saw a cat eating delightfully.  Finally, a weird person placed a strange stick-like thing in me, and I felt warm.  But in a while, I felt hotter and hotter, until CRACKLE!  I was on fire!!

        I was burned to death.  The firefighter came and put out the fire.

        So now, here I sit in a big, round puddle.  My life was etremely funny.  Why couldn't I have been a black mamba instead?

The Dirty and Rotten Day I Die, by Zivah (5th grade)

        Here I am, sitting on a counter, ready to be carved by despicable humans.  I am wasting my life to be carved for this "fun" holiday called "Halloween."  It is like humans have no common sense at all.  Life is boring.  It always will be.

        As I grumble on the counter, a dwarf human approaches me.  "Look, a pumpkin!" 

        "Oh wow, how surprising," I say with obvious sarcasm.  It doesn't matter though.  No one can understand me.

        The tall and annoying human comes up to me.  "Time to carve this little pumpkin!" I say.  Don't call me "little," you hairy giant!  She smiles.  I start to ponder if humans have brains.

        With the sharp blade on the evil knife, the giant slices my head off.  The pain rushes to my face.  I see my sticky orange guts splatter on me.  My heart hurts even more than my head.  I feel my life has been snatched out of me.

        Once the despicable giant is done scooping my guts, they put some useless candle inside me.  Did I really lose my life to have a candle put inside me?  I want to say no.  The giant puts me on a crowded porch.

        The giant lights the candle in me.  Something happens.  I feel a change in my heart.  I smile.

        Halloween arrives, and everyone loves me.  I finally feel special.  "Look at the pumpkin!" says the dwarf kid.  Maybe life isn't boring.  Maybe you have to change the way you see it.

December 25: D-day, by Audrey (5th grade)

        At least I survived Halloween and Turkey Day. I’m glad that I wasn’t the big orange kind of pumpkin that everybody wanted to carve. On Turkey day, I was relieved when I wasn’t made into pie. Life would be fine if not a little bit boring. I was safe unlike my cousin, the squash, who got made into an appetizer.

        The living room table. Tell me about it. Uhhh! That navy blue color is so ugly, I would do anything to not be stuck there. Day after day, month after month, the children running by, the mother telling them to stop running. 

        The worst part was when the family started decorating for “red and green day”. They got it totally wrong! Nothing could go even worse.

        Dang it! I probably jinxed it. They started putting up a pine tree right in front of my eyes. It didn’t even look real! Even worse, they were putting red, green, and gold balls on the tree. For heaven's sake, gold. Seriously? GOLD out of all colors. 

        Interrupting my misery, suddenly horribly cheerful music blasted out of the kitchen. Oh, this day couldn’t get any worse! I tried to zone out but the music was just too loud. 

        Wait, did I just wake up from a nap? The sky was already dark. Now the family was eating ham and mush. That same cheerful music was playing again. That was definitely not music to my ears. 

        One moment later the children were up and running again. I think they were playing tag. They were running around the ugly blue table that I was on. Three short minutes later, the children were running so fast like the wind, I was afraid I was going to meet my death. I was right! The next thing I knew, I was tumbling off the table. 

        Those mere three seconds seemed like eternity. Oh the pain! I was pretty sure I broke 17 of my bones. All of my orange and gooey insides had become outsides and the children were screaming. Then the mother came over and picked me up and tossed me into an endless hole. I got quite dizzy when the mother tossed me into the pit of doom. When I finally hit the ground I was actually surprised I was cushioned by some rotten lettuce. I asked them where we were and they said something that sounded like smash jam. What?!

         Then I felt quite different. My brain was getting really fogged up. The last thing I comprehended was that I was in a smash jam which could also be called the endless hole of misery and death. At least I can get my boring life published in a journal. 

        Well, maybe.

The Monster/Pumpkin Draw Game!

 This Halloween-time game is always a favorite of my returning students!  Here's how you play:

Step 1:Each student draws a monster.  (My younger students drew creative pumpkins.) They should include a background and many different colors to practice using adjectives in their writing.

Step 2: The students write a detailed desription on their monster.  Adjectives are crucial, for every single noun!  Size, shape, color, number.

Step 3: Students exchange written work and attempt to draw each other's monster with no talking or asking for clarification!

Winners are voted on by the class.  Congratulations to our winners below!

Angela's Monster (6th grade)

        My monster has a gorgeous smile with peach colored teeth.  His eyes are drawn using a pencil, with the pencil lead coloring in the whole eye, which is a little smaller than a pinky finger.  Furry the Monster only has one eye because it's facing the left, so it's only showing one side.  The whole body is yellow-green.  There are dark pink bunmy ears on the head.  To be specific, it is considered a dinosaur.  

        Next up, we have the body.  As I mentioned in the first paragraph, it's yellow-green.  There are peach colored spikes along the back and all the way to the tail, the same color as the teeth.  There are pink polka-dots near the spikes.  It has a spiky tail.  It's standing upright.  There are two arms sticking out of the belly.  There are two feet on the bottom of the dinosaur, or polka-dotted monster.

        In the background, use the same green as the dinosaur's whole body for the grass, not too tall.  Make a brown stem, one-side green leaf on the right of the steam, yellow center, and red petals around the center.  Draw the type of flower I just described on the left side of the monster, and one on the right side.  Draw a blue cloud on each side of the dinosaur, making the right one a lot bigger than the left.  When drawing the clouds, make the base flat and three bumps on the top of each cloud (not bumps all over the place like a regular cloud.)

Angela wrote so clearly, from the cloud styles and location, to the flowers, to the direction the monster was facing, that her partner Allison (6th grade) drew this twin picture!

Adelynn's Monster (5th grade)

        My monster has a pumpkin-shaped body, two ovals overlapping an oval in the middle.  The body is orange and medium-sized.

        There is a mushroom on the pumpkin.  The mushroom has a stubby stem that is a light yellow color.  The stem of the mushroom is located where the stem of the pumpkin would be.  The mushroom cap is wide and almost covers the length of the whole pumpkin.  It has a wavy bottom and is bright red with three white spots, one on the left, one on the bottom right side, and one on the top right side of the mushroom.

        There are two eyes, one on the top left side of the pumpkin and one on the top left side of the pumpkin.  They are oval-shaped with points on the ends.  There are two lines coming from the top to the bottom of the eye.  They are slightly curved and there are diamonds for the pupils.  The pupil is black and the iris is dark purple.  The eyebrows are really small compared to the eyes, and are thin black lines that are slightly curved.  They are as wide as your nail, the white part of your nail to be specific.

        The mouth is in the bottom middle part of the pumpkin.  It is the shape of an almost-full moon, with a tongue that is an oval in the bottom of the mouth.  It is a magenta color, and the rest of the mouth is black.

        The legs are almost to the end of the paper.  They are slightly curved lines.  There are four of them on each side of the pumpkin.  On the end of every leg, there is a purple foot.  It is a small circle.

        Under the pumpkin is a wavy line that goes across the paper.  All of the space under the line is a mahogany color.

        There is a sun on the top left corner of the paper.  It is a yellow circle with two little black circles for eyes and a small U-shaped mouth in between the eyes.  There are nine black rays that are just a line, and all of them are spaced evenly.

Wow! Adelynn put a LOT of time and effort into her writing, so her partner Mabel (5th grade) drew this!

Vivia's Pumpkin (4th grade)

        My pumpkin is a large round orange pumpkin with dark orange lines.  It has two dark pink triangle shaped eyes, a dark pink upside down triangle shaped nose, and a dark pink smiling mouth with two fangs hanging off the bottom of the mouth.  It has three long blue straight whiskers on the left and right side of it.  It has a medium blue headband with cat ears attached to it.  It has a sort of thick pencil gray stem that is slightly tilted to the left.  The stem is not that long.  My pumpkin sits on tall green grass that goes almost halfway up the page.  Above it, there is a blue sky.

Wow!  Look at this twin that Ella (4th grade) drew!  Great writing, Vivia, and great reading, Ella!

Jaime's Pumpkin (4th grade)

        My pumpkin is a jack-o-lantern.  It is big and orange, and the mouth looks like a watermelon that is colored in with pencil.  It has big round glasses, the color of pink and purple, but more of a purple, and they are overlapping.  The color of th epumpkin is lightly colored orange with a dark outline of orange. The stem is also outlined with dark green and colored in with light green.  It kind of looks like a volcano because it goes up and then there is a circle connected to it.  It is a light green stem that goes in a loopty loop eight times on the left.  Under the pumpkin is grass with zig zags to the sides.  In the middle of the colored-in grass is where the big pile of dark brown dirt is, in mostly scribbles.  Over him is a small sun on the right hand corner with very short lines going out, mostly toward the left.  It is colored in yellow.  The sky has no color. 

This brother and sister paid had Sibling power!  Little brother Wesley (2nd grade) read carefully and drew this:

Congratulations to our winners!