We enjoy playing with real foods in our different play contexts.  This can encourage greater learning than playing with plastic foods.  Today it prompted an excellent opportunity for some practical problem solving.

Luca had noticed that the coconuts were noisy if you shook them next to your ear.  This prompted a lengthy discussion about what might be inside.  The children decided that we should open the coconut to find out.  This proved to be really challenging.

It was wonderful to see the children cooperating and using a trial and error approach to get the coconut to open.  They tried bashing it with various resources they found within the nursery, smashed it onto the table and dropped it onto the floor.  They soon decided that they needed a hammer.  A small group of children (with the help of the ladies in the office) borrowed the janitors hammer.  They were all eager to have a go at striking the coconut.  They listened well to follow the safety rules and were able to suggest how to keep safe when using a real tool.  They were shocked to learn that even the hammer would not break the hard coconut shell.  At this point, they decided we should smash the coconut on a harder floor.  They thought that grass would be too soft but were eager to try the concrete.

We ventured outside into the pouring rain and took it in turns to throw the coconut onto the concrete floor.  We finally managed to crack the coconut! We were all delighted! We persevered and kept smashing the coconut into smaller pieces.  We were all surprised at how strong the hard coconut shell was.  We spoke about why the coconut needed such a hard shell.  We decided that the coconut would not be safe to eat – we had smashed it on muddy, wet slabs.  We are eager to get more coconut to taste. We spoke about what we could do with the coconut shells.  Annabelle thought she would like some shell pieces in the sand.  Tabitha thought it would be good to have coconut shell in the playdough.