Close up of needles and pine cone.
I have decided to give our Nature Study time a little more focus than “Hey look… cool bug” (although we will still be doing that 😉 ) by joining in the Outdoor Hour challenges. This week’s theme was Pine Trees.
We chose a pine tree right outside our kitchen window. Which I believe is a Scotch Pine (feel free to correct me if I am wrong). I summarized the information given in Handbook of Nature Study to the kids and then we made some general observations ourselves.
Some of Our Observations:
Trunk splits at the top.
Needles in bundles of twos.
Needles about 3-5 inches long.
Hard, spiny pine cones.
Needles are flat on one side, rounded on the other.
Close up of the bark.
Great example of a split trunk top.
We talked about why the trunk might have split into two stems at the top. We talked about the pine cones why they might be hard and spiny. Then we took some stuff in to the kitchen table to observe closer.
We did a little experiment with the pine cone. I asked Bug for a hypothesis on what would happen if we put the open pine cone in a bowl of water. He said it would close up to keep the seeds dry (obviously something we have talked about before). Here is the pine cone we started with and what it looked like after 10 minutes in the bowl of water. It had indeed closed up.
Same Pine Cone: Dry & Open (10 minutes in water) Wet & Closed.
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That is the coolest thing I’ve seen so far in the pine tree study! I have never seen that done before…thank you so much for sharing your experiment with everyone.
Welcome to the challenges.
Barb-Harmony Art Mom
What a fun study! I love your pics. We may have to try that experiment…
In all my years of teaching I’ve never seen that done. How cool! I always thought closed pine cones “weren’t done yet”! Shows how much I know. Great nature study this week. I definitely want to be included in next weeks.
Yeah, the pine cone experiment is a lot of fun. I read about it in “Nature in a Nutshell for Kids.” My husband and I did it late one evening when I first read about it. We were skeptical. Low and behold it worked. LOL… Kinda funny thinking about hubby and I conducting kitchen table experiments after the kids are in bed. Cool is cool though.
http://astore.amazon.com/natureswaylearning-20/detail/047104444X
What a great experiment! I would have checked it first too. Thanks for sharing!
I have to agree, that is the coolest experiment I’ve seen. I am definitely going to try that. Great pictures and thanks for sharing!
[…] that the scales were slowly opening as it was drying out, or as it was warming up. Then I read Michele’s cone experiment, which suggests it is the water that closes the scales. This makes sense: so the seeds won’t […]