Try Out New Foods with a Taste Test

I was on Pinterest recently and saw a post about doing a family fun night activity involving taste testing different flavors of Oreos. There are so many different ones now, and this particular activity, from Joy in the Works, involved buying different flavors and doing a blind tasting where people tried to guess which flavor they were sampling.

But it occurred to me that this could actually be an educational activity as well.

Whether you are tasting cookies, different colors of watermelon (that one is from Go Science Girls) or different varieties of apples (1 Plus 1 Plus 1 Equals 1), tasting foods and describing the taste is a great way to learn about our sense of taste, the words we use to describe taste, and to expand vocabulary and description of tastes.

Ask children to come up with different words to describe what they are tasting: crunchy, chewy, soft, tangy, sweet and so on. And remember that smell and sight are important in how we perceive taste, so describing those things is great, too.

Do you ever use taste tests as a way to learn? I’d love to hear about it!

[Photo via Go Science Girls.]

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Watermelon Activities for Kids

I’m in deep denial about the fact that new year is almost upon us again! It’s been the fastest and the longest year at the same time, and I can look back and see some good things as well as some things I wish had gone differently.

Doing a year in review with your kids — whether in the classroom or at home — is a good way to capture some of their memories and the things they really liked about the year gone by.

There are a lot of different printable year in review worksheets you can use if you want to make this super easy. Here are links to a few (often part of larger posts about NYE celebrations with kids that are worth a read, too):

Teach Beside Me has lots of fun printables fro the end of the year, including a year in review that covers favorite memory, funniest memory and the best book they read, among other topics.
NurtureStore‘s version has space for a self-portrait and prompts like favorite toy, best day out this year and future dream job.
Remember favorites, their “best idea” of the year and have room for setting goals for next year with this one from The Keele Deal.
The year in review from Yes We Made This has room for drawing or writing and includes things like something they learned, a memory they made and a place they visited.

Of course you could pretty easily make your own year in review for the whole family to do that asks questions based on what you most want to remember. (Favorite video game? Best friend? Favorite family memory?)

And if after the year in review you’re ready to look ahead a bit, Mrs. Merry has new year’s resolution printables to inspired kids to look ahead and set goals for things they want to try. You can totally fill this one out as a grownup, too.

[Photo: Mrs. Merry]

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