Comparing Apples to Apples - Exploring Food With Children

I decided it was about time to serve up a healthy snack, and do a little scientific research at the same time.

The little ones and I made a trip to the local grocery store, to "pick" one of each type of apple they had to offer. I made sure to choose apples that had name stickers, so we'd know what we had we got home.

We prepared a chart, and drew each apple.

We weighed them.

Then, we washed them, and cut them up for sampling. I transferred the name stickers from the apples, to the plates I placed them on, so we could continue to differentiate between types.

Finally, we tasted them, one variety at a time, and recorded whether they were sour or sweet, crisp or soft, fresh or not, and each child's opinion of the apples. We may yet graph our results, or make up a few Venn diagrams, but for now we're trying to decide if we should make the leftovers into a pie, or crisp, or add a caramel sauce to dip them - we had one healthy snack after all, and we wouldn't want to get carried away.

It's great to be a homeschooler.