Coconut Tree Update

Growing a coconut palm tree from a seed doesn't take a lot of work, but it does take a lot of time and patience. My son researched techniques for growing coconuts and discovered that by placing a coconut in a large plastic bag with a bit of water it would sprout. He tried it and it worked. That was just over one year ago.

Here are previous blog posts from when he was just beginning to sprout the coconut.

Coconut - Eating Seeds
Coconut - Activities with Plants

It's now been twelve months. The coconut still rests inside the plastic bag on our kitchen window sill and the coconut palm is about 1 foot tall. This has been one of his most satisfying plant experiments and I recommend it for any young children interested in plants and science.




Check out these great blogs full of educational activity ideas.

Winter Trees - Identify Trees by Their Shape

We identified trees by their shape and painted winter tree silhouettes.

In the spring, summer and fall many trees can be easily identified by their leaves and fruit, but in winter when the leaves of deciduous trees fall to the ground the challenge is greater. The simple children's picture book Winter Trees describes how to identify several common trees in winter by their shape and bark.

After reading the book, we took a second look at several trees we were familiar with.

 The apple trees had "spooky" branches with sharp bends.

 The alder trees had multiple trunks and were shaped like pointy ovals.

 The oak tree had a very round shape.

 The maple was shaped like the arch of a Gothic window with it's pointy top.

 The magnolia looked like an umbrella since the  branches were much thicker near the ends.

 The birch trees had a V shape since most had double trunks.

 The silver lime trees were very triangular.

The horse chestnut trees were oval shaped.

Tree Silhouettes

The silhouettes were started by lightly sketching the shape of the tree on the watercolor paper. The tree above is an Oak and therefore has a round shape.

Next, the trunk was lightly drawn, and big branches seen in the photos were attached to the trunk. From there, small branches were added.

 Once the sketches were complete, they were colored with black sharpie markers.

Finally, a line was drawn across the page to represent the ground and the backgrounds were painted with watercolor paints.

Silver Lime Tree Silhouette (daughter age 12)

 Oak Tree Silhouette (by mom)

Please visit our Science Page for more hands-on and creative Science.
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* I did not receive any compensation for this recommendation. I'm just a homeschooling mom who has found many products that I like. If you're interested in the products I recommend on this blog I want to make it easy for you to find them. 
** I am an Amazon associate and receive a small portion of the sales on orders made after clicking in from this site, which I promptly spend on homeschooling books and supplies for my children.

Activities with Plants

My son has led his own plant study through research, experiments and activities.

Plants can be grown from seed, but many can be grown from other plant parts as well. Temperature, moisture and amount of light needs to be just right for sprouting to occur. Each type of plant is unique. Experimenting with plants can be interesting, educational and enjoying.

Here are some unique plant experiments to try.

Sprouting a Coconut

A coconut is a very large seed. There are at least two ways to get a coconut seed to sprout. One is to place the coconut in a bucket of warm water with a weight on top of the coconut to keep it submerged. The other is to place the coconut into a plastic bag with a small amount of water inside.

My son chose the plastic bag method. Patience is the key. Coconuts usually sprout in one month, but can take up to nine months. The white dot is the sprout as it emerges from the coconut.

Here it is again one month later.


Growing a Tomato Plant from Suckers

Suckers are branches on a tomato plant that grow at a junction after another branch has grown which contains flowers. Suckers take away energy from the growing tomatoes and cause the plant to get bigger. Many tomato growers break off the suckers.

Once the sucker is broken off, it can grow into a separate plant. Place the branch in water and wait for roots to sprout, then bury the roots in the ground.

Growing Celery

Did you know celery will grow from the bottom of the stalk? Take the part that is normally discarded and place it in water. After a week or two new celery should start to grow up from the base. Following the growth of the top, roots should begin to show. Once the roots show, place the plant in the ground.
Growing Pineapple

A pineapple plant can be grown from the leaves at the top of an existing pineapple.

Trim off the pineapple and place the leaves with a little bit of flesh into water and wait for roots to sprout. This is another plant that requires patience as it can take four years for a pineapple plant to produce a pineapple.




Our other plant and science activities can be found on our Science Page.

Growing Trees from Seed

In Red Leaf, Yellow Leaf by Lois Ehlert a boy tells the story of his sugar maple tree. One day workers in the tree nursery went into the forest to find and care for trees. When the trees grew bigger their roots were wrapped and they were sold to people who would care for them.

My son read this book a few years ago and I believe it was his inspiration for Chessie, his horse chestnut tree.

One day in the spring he dug up some baby horse chestnut seeds that had just sprouted underneath a tree in the park.

He brought it home and cared for it......

and is still dreaming of the day when his tree will grow as big as it's mama.

 
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Eating Seeds

We ate a variety of seeds and sprouted a few.

Popcorn
Tomie de Paola is one of my favorite children's authors and I love The Popcorn Book. In the story two boys learn to make popcorn on the stove. A Native American popcorn legend is told and there is a bit of popcorn trivia. Since popcorn is a seed, this book was all about seeds. Of course we made popcorn after reading.

Seeds on Rolls
While learning about seeds we purchased some bread rolls sprinkled with seeds. Among them were;

pumpkin seeds
poppy seeds
sunflower seeds

Coconut Seeds
We ate and sprouted coconut seed.

Being from a northern climate, coconut is not a seed normally on our menu, so it was a real treat when we ate coconut and learned about it being a large seed.

She noticed that as you chew it juice is released. I noticed that it takes a really long time to chew just like other seeds.

My son has been interested in growing different trees and plants and has been asking for me to get him a coconut. After researching sprouting coconut seeds on the internet he told me there are two methods. One is to place the coconut in a bucket of water with a rock on top of it to keep it under water. The other is to place the coconut in a sealed plastic bag with a small amount of water. Both take between two weeks to three months for the coconut to sprout.

Coconuts don't like the temperature to drop below 60 degrees F, so this little seed will likely be stored in the kitchen.

He chose the plastic bag method.

Eating Flowers

When we were in Turkey we saw fields of artichokes. Unfortunately the view was from a tour bus window. I would have liked a closer look.

Stems, roots, flowers, leaves and seeds are all different parts of plants that are commonly eaten. We've spent a week eating specific parts of vegetables. It's a simple and fun way for kids to learn different plant parts. This week we focused on flowers and prepared artichokes. Cauliflower and broccoli were also possibilities, but since we eat them often artichokes seemed like more fun.

I steamed them in water until the petals could be easily removed and then we scraped off the flesh with our teeth.

How can you tell the difference between apple and cherry trees?

We compared apple and cherry trees to find the easiest way to tell them apart.

They have similar leaves.
Cherry trees blossom first.
Cherry blossoms are white, but apple are both white and light pink.

For us the bark was the key. The cherry tree bark is smooth compared to the rougher bark on the apple tree.

Determining differences between trees is one way to learn to look at various features. Since there are many similarities between fruit trees it was fun to find a unique feature.

How Do Apple Trees Grow?

We read the book How Do Apples Grow? and then got a good look at an apple blossom.

The spring is a really great time to learn about apples. When the blossoms appear it is easy to see the girl and boy parts of the flowers. The stamens are the boy parts and are hollow like straws. They stand tall in the middle of the apple blossom. The pistols surround the stamens and are the pollen producing part of the flower.

The book How Do Apples Grow? explains how bees pollinate apple blossoms resulting in fruit. After we got a good look at the apple blossoms, we looked to see if we could find pistols and stamens on other flowers.

We could. They were easy to see on the tulips.

This post is linked to some of these wonderful blog hops.

* I did not receive any compensation for this recommendation. I'm just a homeschooling mom who has found many products that I like. If you're interested in the products I recommend on this blog I want to make it easy for you to find them. 
** I am an Amazon associate and receive a small portion of the sales on orders made after clicking in from this site, which I promptly spend on homeschooling books and supplies for my children.