Dissecting an apple {Montessori-inspired activity}

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Dissecting an apple is a great way to teach kids about fruit, to give them an early experience with dissection, and to inspire their interest in botany. In this post I’m sharing a Montessori-inspired apple dissection activity we did to learn about this wonderful fruit.

Note: For more kid-friendly apple activities, see my Apple Unit Study page.

We decided to “sacrifice” two apples to our dissection activity. We selected a green one and a red one. I, obviously, did the cutting while keeping my kids a safe distance from the knife. As with all activities involving kids, take care that kids are kept safely away from sharp objects that may harm them.

We decided to cut the red apple in half from side to side. This revealed the beautiful star pattern inside where the seeds are stored. We remembered learning about this star shape in some of the books about apples we had read.

We extracted the seeds from the apple and counted them. We found eight in all. (My kids have been obsessed with collecting seeds ever since we did our seed unit study last year.)

Next, we cut the green apple in half. But this time we split it from top to bottom, which gave us a different view of the inside of the apple.

After examining our apples, I pulled out our apple three part cards. The cards we used are from ABC Teach, although you can find others at Montessori Print shop and Puzzle Heads.