Take Something Apart ... Pinecones

Taking things apart is a wonderful way to explore structure. The ability and inclination to look carefully for structure is key to engaging meaningfully with mathematics and science.

Invite your child to take something apart ... what did they learn from taking it apart? Could they put it back together? Could they use the pieces to make something different? Could they make the thing (or something like it) with other materials?

Pinecones

We took apart a pinecone to learn more about it. We played with putting the pieces back together in different ways to make beautiful patterns.

We also learned so much about the structure of the pinecone parts that when we went on a walk, we recognized the large petal-like structure below as part of a pinecone. That inspired us to look more closely, and we discovered a pinecone that looks like an open rose! It is from a deodar cedar: a tree we learned more about after noticing its special pinecones. We never would have noticed if we hadn't taken apart a pinecone to learn more.