Juicing with 7 Year Olds - Action in the Kitchen

Last Friday we had a field trip day to put into action what we have been learning in our inquiry into health. We hiked up one of the surrounding mountains in the morning, I think it's called Fongshen Mountain? We had perfect hiking weather, overcast and cool!

Hiking Field Trip - UOI 2 Health

Hiking Field Trip - UOI 2 Health

We told the students that we would be making healthy juice by juicing fruits and vegetables. We asked them to think of a fruit and a vegetable that they would like to drink the juice from, or a fruit and vegetable that they have NEVER tried the juice from and to bring it to school. We had all sorts of different fruits and vegetables to try! Dragon-fruit, BROCCOLI, guava, bok choy, cabbage, melon, so much variety! 

Juicing with 7 year olds - Action in the kitchen UOI 2 Health

While Ariel and I were preparing the fruit and veggies, we had the students draw a picture of themselves and describe the changes to their body that they noticed while hiking. We talked about strengthening our heart, lungs and muscles while hiking and what happens to our body when we exercise so this activity acted as a quick assessment of their learning and allowed us the time we needed to get everything ready to juice.

What happened to your body while hiking? 

What happened to your body while hiking? 

We made HOT PINK healthy juice!! It was delicious! We combined carrots, dragon-fruit (the pink fruit), guava, cucumbers, and some wax apples. Everybody loved this juice and all my little monkeys were sporting hot pink juice moustaches, so adorable. They loved watching the juice come out of the juicer, the mixing of the colours and touching, smelling, eating the pulp as well.  We made 4 different kinds of mixed fruit and veggie juices and then juiced cucumbers by themselves and juiced broccoli by itself as we had some curious students and RISK-TAKERS that wanted to try just cucumber juice and STRAIGHT BROCCOLI JUICE! It was such a blast and all the students seemed pleasantly surprised at how good the juice was without adding any sugar!

Hot Pink Juice! Juicing with 7 year olds - Action in the kitchen

We had the students record their observations and rate each juice and juice mixes. We got a little carried away with our juicing experiments and didn't end up recording all of our data, but hey, it happens :)

UOI 2 Health - Action in the Kitchen!

After our heathy juice experiments we learned how to make Ants on a Log! I wrote the procedure for "How to Make Ants on a Log" on the whiteboard (yes I managed to review our text type during a field trip day!) and then we passed out the celery, raisins, peanut butter and knives and they went to town making their healthy snacks. They all loved the Ants on a Log snack as well and couldn't believe it was a "healthy" snack! Celery is not a very common vegetable in Taiwan and majority of the students had never eaten it, and none of them had ever eaten celery raw, but they all really liked it. Ariel had never had this snack before either until last year when I introduced it to her, she's also a big fan now of celery and peanut butter! I love sharing new things! I was so busy filling up juice cups and cutting more celery that I forgot to take a picture of our Ants on a Log snack. Luckily my amazing co-teacher Ariel was snapping pictures like crazy so I will be able to snag one from her and post it soon. That's all for now.