Let Science Be Unfinished

It’s easy to think of science as a checklist item: grab an activity, squeeze it into a single lesson, and move on. But science isn’t meant to be “covered” in one sitting. It’s meant to be explored, stretched out, and revisited—like an unfinished story that unfolds over time.

Take pumpkins, for example. A quick version of a “pumpkin lesson” might be carving a jack-o’-lantern or counting seeds as a one-day math tie-in. Kids will enjoy it, but the learning often stops when the activity does.

Now imagine shifting that same resource into the frame of a longer inquiry. The Fabulous Pumpkins unit introduces pumpkin parts, history, uses, and seasonal traditions. Instead of rushing through, you could begin with a student’s authentic question, like“Why do pumpkins have so many seeds?”—and let that question drive the inquiry.

Over several days, students could read the science article in this product (or something similar), label pumpkin parts, and use vocabulary cards to build a shared language. Then, across a week or two, they might collect data by comparing seed counts from different pumpkins, look for patterns, and graph results.

As new questions arise—“Do bigger pumpkins always have more seeds?”—students can design fair tests, debate their findings, and connect them to standards about ecosystems and plant survival. Literacy and writing tasks (“How to grow a pumpkin”) or cultural explorations of pumpkin traditions can deepen the investigation, weaving in math and social studies along the way. What started as a seasonal “activity” grows into a living inquiry that carries forward across disciplines.

When we allow science to stay unfinished and when we resist the urge to wrap it up neatly in one day, we give students the gift of thinking like scientists. Their questions fuel the journey, and the concepts they build will last far longer than the memory of a single activity.