This week, we are in California – just outside of San Francisco with my aunt. My kids are loving helping her watering and caring for her garden, which includes a lemon tree. One of their favorite activities was helping her make lemonade. Here are the steps they took, and some guiding questions we asked along the way, to help make this fun activity into a great learning activity too.
Step 1: Pick the lemons. (If you don’t have your own tree, you could always go to a picking farm – check out YouPick.org to find a farm near you.)
Guiding Questions: How can you tell when a lemon is ripe? What season does a lemon tree produce fruit in? How does the lemon tree produce fruit? Why do you think a lemon tree makes a sour fruit instead of a sweet fruit? Where does the lemon tree hide it’s seeds?
Step 2: Squeeze the lemons and collect their juice.
Guiding Questions: How do we measure out two cups of lemon juice? How many milliliters are equivalent to two cups of lemon juice? What other measurements are equal to two cups of lemon juice?
Step 3: Add water and sugar
Guiding Questions: Why do we dilute the lemon juice with water? Why do we add sugar? What would lemonade taste like if we didn’t add sugar? What would lemonade taste like if we added too much sugar? Why do we need to stir the lemonade? Can we take lemonade apart and get juice, water and sugar again?
Step 4: Enjoy your lemonade!
Guiding Questions: How important is it to taste test your lemonade? Why do different people like their lemonade with different levels of sweet and sour? How do our taste buds work?
If you have time and energy – you may want to try out:
Step 5: Sell your lemonade!
Guiding Questions: Who would buy your lemonade? What would you need (besides lemonade) to sell it? How much would you charge for your lemonade? How much lemonade would you need to make in order to sell it?
What other questions could you ask your children while making lemonade?
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