We visited a preschool last week for circle time and when we left the kids there were getting ready to taste different citrus fruits. Cutie Pie was very dismayed to discover he wouldn’t be part of the tasting experiment. We had to go to the grocery anyway, so I thought why not do this experiment ourselves? We picked up a lemon, lime, grapefruit, orange, tangerine. Cutie Pie and Sweet Pea couldn’t wait to get home and do our citrus experiment of the senses!
First, the boys examined the peels on each fruit (sense of touch) and compared and contrasted them. Were they smooth, rough, round, oval, the same color?
I then cut open the fruit and they told me what they observed about each – the color, the shapes they saw, whether they were juicy. I let them feel the inside of each fruit after I cut a half into quarters. They compared the insides to the other fruits. (sense of sight, touch)
Then the boys smelled each fruit and told me what they discovered.
Finally, we tasted each citrus fruit after. The boys tried to discern sweet or bitter or sour and then compared the taste of each to the other fruits. (sense of taste) Naturally, Cutie Pie picked up pieces of each fruit and gobbled them up and Sweet Pea gingerly tasted and then set them back down. Cutie Pie loves sour things and Sweet Pea is always asking for a sweet treat!
I took the remaining halves of each fruit, a bowl, and a hand-held fruit juicer and showed them how to make Juice! (We did this during J week, so it was perfect timing!) Each had a turn squeezing, pressing, and making a mess! (fine motor) They tasted the resulting juice and I helped them make it ‘drinkable’ by adding some water and sugar. Daddy was very surprised to have some homemade ‘juice’ to taste when he got home!
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