Planning for last month’s book club was a bit of a challenge. While the wintery weather is usually somewhat mild here in the South, that has not been the case this year – and I didn’t want to risk outside plans. So we chose The Lemonade Trick by Scott Corbett for our January book, and it was perfect for these energetic boys.
With that being said, pictures are limited for this one – because these guys kept me hopping! I wish I had their energy.
After discussing the book, we moved into the kitchen to work with some lemons.
The boys took turns rolling them around on the counter, and then each boy juiced at least one lemon. This provided the juice that we needed for all of our other activities.
We made lemonade from scratch next. We mixed up the simple syrup, measured out the lemon juice and the water, and taste-tested the final results. Since several boys wanted seconds, I guess they liked it!
Next we talked about pH and where acids and bases fell on the pH scale. One boy brought a packet of pH paper, so we tested several liquids that we had on hand. I think our favorite part was when we mixed acids and bases to see what would happen.
After that we went back to the counter and mixed up some easy lemon cookies. We baked just a few, and then decided that it was time to break out the lemon juice again.
One of the great things about lemons is that you can use it like invisible ink. The boys thought this was great, and they were really creative about drawing pictures and writing messages on their paper. They simply dipped a cotton swab into pure lemon juice and drew with it on their papers. One boy even made a paper airplane and decorated that!
Heat will make the lemon juice visible. In the past, blowing on the paper with a hair dryer has worked for me, but I couldn’t get the lemon to show up this time. We ended up trying to ‘candle’ the paper, but since the lemons show up right before the paper catches fire, it didn’t always work out too well. I don’t think the boys minded too much – they were having too much fun laughing at me and dancing around, yelling, “Fire! Fire!”4
I didn’t realize that you could do so very much with a lemon until I went looking, but it’s a really neat fruit – and The Lemonade Trick is a great story.
What would you do with a lemon?
