Explore with Pinecones

Why do pinecones open and close?

Introduction:

In this lesson children uses their senses to observe and experience objects and environment. Use simple tools to experiment and observe. Children learn to participate, discuss with adult guidance.

When children are playing outside they always explore the world around them, a great exploration is why a closed and an opened pinecone? Teach children that pinecones are great weather predictors. When the weather is warm, sunny, and dry, the pinecones are opened. But when the weather is cold and wet, the pinecones are closed. 

Prepare:

Collect pinecones from outside. Place a pinecone in cold water and wait for the pinecone to close. If you bought the pinecones in a craft store you may need to place the water with the pinecone inside the fridge overnight. Tip! Let children place the containers in the fridge overnight if the pine cones are not fresh from the forest.

For this experiment you can divide children in groups of two. Provide each group with a clear container of cold water, a washcloth, and a couple of pinecones that are open.

Discuss with children why they think the pinecones are open (the room is dry and warm).

Have children feel the water, and then place the pinecones in the water. Let them describe what happens.

(The pinecones float. The pinecones get wet. The pinecone scales slowly close.)

As soon as the pinecones are closed, let children transfer the pinecones on to the washcloth. The children will love to watch the pinecones slowly reopen as they dry.

Let children investigate and explore with the pinecones on their own. Have some large tweezers so children can pull out and explore for seeds inside the pinecone.

Inside a pinecone are lots of tiny, light seeds. When the weather is dry, the pinecone opens up so that the seeds can be dispersed in the air and fly away. This is how our pine trees grow.

When it is wet or cold, the scales close up to protect the seeds.

 There are many ways to explore with pinecones, have children compare, make projects out of the pinecones, like christmas trees, make an owl out of a pinecones by adding eyes, use cotton ball and stuff into the pinecones to fill up for a body, can use pinecones for decorations and more.

Children can be engineers and will be intrigued with a pinecone building challenge. Give them a number of pinecones to count out and stack. Start small and increase the number each time they are successful.