Coconut Mini-Inquiry

One of our favorite songs to sing together is "Open Up the Coconut" by Roger Day from his album, "Ready to Fly."

In his song, Roger Day sings about all the ways he could think of to open up a coconut (mostly ridiculous!).  You can hear the song that inspired our inquiry here:

We started our inquiry by brainstorming our schema about coconuts. We knew they were hard to open, but we also heard that more people get killed by coconuts than by sharks each year!  We wondered about this, as well as how big they are, what they taste like, and where they come from.

Each group got a coconut and used our five senses to make observations.

 We smelled...

We listened...

We measured...

We looked closely...

Some even noticed that the coconuts came with a label, which helped us learn new information.

Of course, we recorded our observations and thinking in our Think Books!

We also weighed the coconuts and put them in order from lightest to heaviest.

When it came time to open up the coconuts we tried some of Roger Day's strategies from the song, like finding an elephant to sit down on it until the shell breaks...

...or rubbing it underneath our arms until everybody laughs...

Since none of those worked, we tried his strategy of a hammer and a nail--but that was even tricky!  After many attempts we finally got it open.

We taste-tested various coconut drinks and snacks.

sweetened coconut strips

toasted coconut flakes

There were mixed reviews.

Some other cool facts we learned are that coconuts are actually seeds (not nuts), and monkeys are actually trained to climb coconut palms and harvest the coconuts, and it is very dangerous for the farmer because he has to watch out for falling coconuts.

What are you wondering about coconuts?  Do you like snacks/food made from coconuts?