Winter Fun - Hot Chocolate Flavor Identification Game

While the girls were outside filming in the cold, yesterday, I set up a game of mystery hot chocolate tasting, to warm them up when they came back inside.

We played the same game last year, with holiday tea blends.  It was such a big hit then, I knew we'd have to play it again, and when I happened to come across a display of individually packaged servings of hot chocolate mixes, in various flavors - I knew they'd be perfect for our first big winter storm.

With the wind howling, and the temperatures dropping, I put the kettle on to boil, and started preparing cups, and playing cards.  I made one card per player (pictured above), listing each flavor of hot chocolate we had, with a column of letters to match them to.
 

For each hot chocolate flavor, I prepared a set of cups - one for each player, with a letter on the side (different for each player), and the hot chocolate flavor on the bottom.

Then, I mixed up the hot chocolate, dipped a little into each of the players' cups, and moved them quickly to the table, with the playing cards, while the hot chocolate was still nice and warm...

The players sampled, and guessed the flavor in each of their cups...

...checking the bottoms of the cups to see if they were correct, once they had guessed all of the flavors.

The player who correctly identified the most flavors - in this case E (age 10) with 3 correct matches - was the winner. 

Just like with the teas, it was harder than we thought it would be to discern between the flavors, and there were some real surprises.  Unlike, the with the teas, we did not pick a new favorite - the children were staunch milk chocolate fans before we played the game, and remained so afterwards, as well.