Oh Coconuts!

My newest saying is from The Homegrown Preschoolers website... #SAYYES!  So when we were at the grocery store and N asked if we could buy a coconut, I paused, thought, then said "Yes!"  And he happily went and picked out his favorite!

I have NEVER in my life opened a coconut but that didn't stop us!  So on a rainy Friday morning, we got everything we needed and opened our first coconut...together!

We started by watching a YouTube video.
How to open a Coconut by The Produce Man

Then I asked the kids to go and play for a bit while I gathered everything up!

I am a HUGE fan of prepping-before-doing ESPECIALLY when I have an 18 month old tornado in the house.

I knew we needed Daddy's electric drill, a hammer, a cleaver knife, a measuring cup and a few spoons.
 So I gathered it up, set it up and then called down the kiddos.

First we drilled hole into the "eyes" of the coconut.  This is how you drain the coconut water...

which is the next step.

We were amazed with ALL the water that was in this lil guy.  1 cup of coconut water - 

that DIDN'T taste very good at all!

Now that we had the water out, we needed to crack it open!  And this was tricky!!!!

We tried a hammer around the circumference of the coconut - didn't work!

Then we decided to try sawing using the meat cleaver knife - didn't work!

So we need to call in Daddy (thank goodness he was home sick that day!)

He used the cleaver knife in a slow-chopping motion around the coconut - just like in the video.

And now we have an opened coconut!  

Thanks DAD!

The coconut smelled awesome!  The texture was "slimy" according to the boys.

Next we needed to scrape the meat out of the coconut!  We decided to try a number of different tools.  Spoons, butter knifes, 

ice cream scoop, vegetable peeler - you name it, they wanted to try it.

Once we had enough to taste, we did.  And it just wasn't that great!  Honestly, the packaged kind has SO much more flavor or maybe we picked out a coconut that just wasn't ripe?  Who knows....

All I DO know, is that we had a great time doing this!  I left out the coconut the rest of the day for the boys to do "whatever" with.  

My favorite was MiniM - he rein-acted the whole experiment in his own little way!   

So I challenge you!  

SAY YES!

I'm not saying to everything!  

But to say yes to the things that make memories, explore new ideas or create laughter!

Happy Learning with your Little Ones!