Science and kindergarten readiness fun and learning do not need to be something that kids do, it can be something they eat! Today’s play-of-the-day is both a make and a taste with little ones sharing in the activity as much as is appropriate.
With so many food items available prepackaged or processed, kids do not have an accurate idea of where many of them come from, other than the store. After a request for some orange juice discovered that we didn’t have any, the best alternative was to make some. First came rolling the orange, to make it soft and juicy inside.
For older toddlers or preschoolers, you can find 3 different size cups: a small, medium, and large, Ask your child if the juice will fill up the small cup, the medium one, or the big one. The orange was too big for the medium cup, so Lee guessed it would fill the big one. Then, it was time to cut and squeeze, which is great exercise for lots of small muscles in the hands and fingers.
When kids help to do something, they are so keen that they often want to do it all by themselves, but big grown-up hands helped as well, to get as much juice out as possible and to hold the juicer in place on the counter. When we poured the juice out of the juicer, it only filled the smallest of the three cups. One orange doesn’t seem to make a lot of juice. But it apparently tasted yummy!
The juice activity was great for some making and learning fun. Not only do kids get a chance to participate, they make the connection between the fruit and the juice. Such questions as: Will this orange give us some apple juice? What kind of juice comes from an orange? seem obvious to us, but to kids they are a new discovery. From these small bits, kids develop their understanding of the world and build their background knowledge in science. Would you agree this orange juice had some extra science ingredients for your child, too?