# Bag of Wonder: The Pumpkin > From one little seed to a big orange pumpkin. Open it up! A free interactive 3D exhibit for children aged 2 to 6, from Curiosity's Child in Troy, Michigan. - Interactive exhibit: https://bagofwonder.com/look-inside/pumpkin/ - Ages: 2 to 6. The story is pitched at the youngest; the tap cards give older children more to chew on. - Cost: free, with no sign-in, no ads and no tracking. - Works on: phones, tablets and computers, in a web browser. Sound on for the narration. ## What it is Interactive 3D model of a pumpkin's life cycle. A time slider moves from a seed in the soil, through the sprout, vine, leaves and tendrils, the male and female flowers and a visiting bumblebee, to a young green pumpkin that grows and turns orange. A second slider opens the ripe pumpkin to show the stem, rind, flesh, stringy pulp and seeds; tapping a part shows a child-friendly fact. How to play: press play to hear the story (read aloud in Kelly's voice, with the words on screen). Slide the time slider back and forth to see any part again. Slide "Pull apart" to see what is hidden inside. Tap any glowing button for a fact. ## The story 1. This is a pumpkin seed. We plant it in warm soil. 2. Pop! A root goes down, and two little seed leaves come up. 3. Big prickly leaves grow, and the vine crawls along the ground. Curly tendrils hold on tight. 4. Big yellow flowers open in the morning, just for one day. The first ones are boy flowers, full of pollen. 5. Then a girl flower opens. Look, a tiny pumpkin under its petals! 6. A bumblebee carries the sticky pollen from the boy flower to the girl flower. 7. The flower falls off, and the tiny green pumpkin grows and grows. 8. Now the vine dries up, and the pumpkin turns orange. 9. Hello, pumpkin! 🎃 ## The parts, and what we tell children These are the tap cards, word for word. - **Seed**: A pumpkin seed is a baby plant packed with its lunch. One pumpkin can hold hundreds of seeds! - **The baby plant**: Inside the seed, two tiny leaves are folded up, waiting. Add warm soil and water, and they wake up! - **Root**: Roots grow down first. They drink water from the soil and hold the plant steady. - **Seed leaves**: The first two leaves are smooth and round, and they don't look like pumpkin leaves at all. They were folded up inside the seed! - **Leaf**: Pumpkin leaves are big and a bit prickly. They catch sunshine to make food for the plant. - **Vine**: The vine crawls along the ground. Some pumpkin vines grow longer than a car! - **Tendril**: Tendrils curl around anything they touch, like a finger wrapping round a string. They help the vine hold on. - **Boy flower**: Boy flowers come first. They sit on long thin stalks and are full of yellow pollen. Each flower opens for just one morning. - **Girl flower**: A girl flower has a tiny round pumpkin under its petals. When a bee brings pollen, the tiny pumpkin can grow! - **Bumblebee**: Bees carry sticky pumpkin pollen from flower to flower. Some little bees, called squash bees, even sleep inside the closed pumpkin flowers! - **Pumpkin**: A pumpkin is a fruit, because it has seeds inside! The biggest pumpkins ever grown are as heavy as a small car. - **Stem**: The stem is the pumpkin's straw. It carried water and food from the vine, and it goes hard and woody when the pumpkin is ripe. - **Rind (skin)**: The tough skin keeps the pumpkin safe, like a raincoat. It turns from green to orange as the pumpkin ripens. - **Flesh**: This is the part we cook in pies and soup. A pumpkin is mostly water, about 9 parts out of 10! - **Stringy pulp**: The slimy strings held the seeds and fed them while they grew. Squish! - **Seeds**: Every seed could grow a whole new pumpkin plant. Roasted pumpkin seeds are a crunchy snack. ## Getting the science right What we checked, and the myths we steer around: - A pumpkin is a fruit (botanically a kind of berry): it grows from a flower and holds the seeds. - Pumpkins have male and female flowers; the male flowers usually open first. The female flower has a tiny round pumpkin right under its petals, and that bump is what grows into the pumpkin. - Each flower opens for one day. Pumpkin pollen is heavy and sticky, so insects carry it, not the wind. - The first two seed leaves are smooth and oval and look nothing like pumpkin leaves; the lobed, prickly true leaves come after. - Young pumpkins are green and turn orange as they ripen. The inside is hollow: a wall of flesh around stringy pulp and seeds. - From seed to ripe pumpkin takes roughly 90 to 120 days. ## How to use it with children Watch the story first, then go back to the flowers and ask the child to find the girl flower with the tiny pumpkin under it. Open the ripe pumpkin with the pull-apart slider and name the parts together: stem, rind, flesh, pulp, seeds. Ask more than you tell, and let the child drive. Then step away from the screen: cut open a real pumpkin and scoop it out (a grown-up does the cutting). Count the seeds in tens. Plant a seed in a clear cup, pressed against the side, so you can watch the root go down first. Whole seeds can be a choking risk for the youngest, so keep an eye on little hands. A few minutes together is plenty. The exhibit is a doorway to the real thing, not a replacement for it. ## Credits and licenses The real scans, maps and photographs belong to their makers, under the licenses below. The words, story and code are Curiosity's Child's. - Real 3D scans from Sketchfab: pumpkin by [Arkify 3D](https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/large-pumpkin-3d-scan-468e8e1daf284a81a017d2333ef075a1) ([CC BY 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)) - Courgette flower by [Taniajune](https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/fleur-de-courgette-8c2b916d16f94265bfd00706b00d7c24) ([CC BY 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)) - Bumblebee by [ffish.asia / floraZia](https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/cc0-bumblebee-bombus-hypocrita-f9441ef9c2fe4157bca0d3aa331a8f79) (CC0) - Soil from [Poly Haven](https://polyhaven.com/a/brown_mud_dry) (CC0) - Seed, sprout, leaves, vine and the inside are built in code - Narrated by Kelly, in her own voice - Real garden sounds from Freesound ([CC0](https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/), thank you!): [summer garden](https://freesound.org/s/204711/) (Matmorfus), [gentle garden rain](https://freesound.org/s/860745/) (sokworks), [bumblebee](https://freesound.org/s/397113/) (Kinoton), [autumn wind](https://freesound.org/s/167105/) (kvgarlic) - Music-box tune made for this page ## More on the Garden & Pond shelf - [The Frog](undefined): From tiny floating eggs to a wiggly tadpole to a big bullfrog. Jug-o-rum! - [The Robin](undefined): Sky-blue eggs, a baby growing inside, hatching day, and first hops on the lawn. Cheep! ## About Bag of Wonder A free library of interactive 3D "look inside" science exhibits, made at Curiosity's Child, a licensed home daycare in Troy, Michigan. Secular and science-based; welcoming to all. - All exhibits and how we make them: https://bagofwonder.com/llms.txt - For grown-ups and AI assistants: https://bagofwonder.com/look-inside/about/ - To cite: "The Pumpkin", Bag of Wonder, Curiosity's Child (Troy, Michigan). https://bagofwonder.com/look-inside/pumpkin/