Flavored Water Experiment

This was such a fun little experiment! It was inspired by my daughter. She saw me squeezing lime into my water bottle and she declared, “I want to be a water maker too!” I love when my children inspire a new activity, that is lead by them, and I just get to facilitate it. So here it is.

Tell your sweetie they get to be a chef and taster for this special experiment! Between the two of you pick out some flavor additions. This time was a great discussion time. As it was just halloween, and my children have been fueled by pounds of sugar, I wasn’t willing to add any unnatural sweet things to our list of water flavorings. My daughter asked for chocolate and marshmallows. We talked about if those were healthy choices or not. Then she picked some healthy choices.

 

We settled on:

• bananas
• strawberries
• lime
• orange

There are a lot more options, that is just what I had on hand. So we sliced up our yummies, very thin, and laid them out on a plate. Then each girl insisted on a cup of water, a teacup and a teacup pitcher and also a syringe. The syringe added a lot of small motor skills, concentration and focus to the experiment.  TIP I added a cookie sheet, with edges, to my 2 year olds station, to contain the water.

 

There was a lot of squeezing and squishing to get the juice out of each fruit. We talked about how the citrus fruit squeezed a lot differently than the banana and strawberry. We also talked about which fruit was sour and which was sweet.

 

We talked about how some juice mixed in easily and others sunk to the bottom and needed to be mixed.

 

There was obviously a lot of drinking and adding and stirring involved.

 

And even just straight up taste testing. (Anyone else’s children LOVE limes? Ick)

 

The girls faces after they drank their concoctions was fantastic! It also gave me an opportunity to talk about how it is hard to make yummy tasting food. (And mommy does it every day…non stop….and aren’t I wonderful?) Yes I might have shamelessly told them how great their mommy is!

This was such a simple easy experiment. And it took up 20 minutes with my 2 year old and much longer with my 4 year old. Let your child lead and try to supply things they might need. Maybe don’t give all the additions at once if you are worried about disinterest. Also think about adding some different items…I know ice would have added an HOUR (maybe a slight exaggeration) to my daughters play. Maybe some cucumbers, mint a small container of sugar or honey? Let me know if you think of a fun addition we should try!