Today’s new presentation tested our gustatory sense with the traditional Montessori tasting bottles. Don’t let my kids’ expressions fool you — the presentation was a lot of fun for everyone. I’ll do my best to explain the set up and process, show my kids’ precious exasperation and tell you where we got all our materials / three-part card extension work.
*Affiliate link: Montessori Services. I completely recommend them for child-sized practical life materials.*
First of all, we got our tasting bottles set from Kid Advance. They have the droppers built right in. There are 8 bottles in total for four different taste profiles: sour, salty, sweet and bitter. The idea is to taste and match.
I filled our bottles with
Sour: Lime juice concentrate + water
Salty: salt water
Sweet: Honey + water
Bitter: Unsweetened cocoa powder + water
Per child, you should ideally have two cups, a pitcher for water, a spoon; then overall you’ll want a towel / mat and some sort of basket or tray with sides to contain the materials. Our petite teacups were a steal from World Market. I love that this all matches so well. Visually appealing but not at all distracting from the purpose of the exercise — to isolate tastes.
Each child has two cups. One is for sipping between tasting and one is for rinsing the spoon. My kids drank a heck of a lot of water during this exercise, so we were sure to keep our pitcher full.
Next line up your bottles so you can begin to taste and make matches.
Use the droppers to add 2-3 drops to each spoon and brace yourself.
Don’t worry we followed up the presentation with a reward for bravery — chocolate muffins! Josie loved this exercise and worked independently at it for a good hour after the initial presentation. Go figure. Girl loves food.
I added some fun extensions to this work from Montessori Print Shop. Card holder pouch from Courtesy and Grace on Etsy. She has some lovely materials and is always adding more. Check her out.
The first are three part cards that show where the tastes can be mapped in the mouth. I added a little compact mirror to our three part card basket to go along with this work. I am hopeful the kids will pull the cards and mirror out along with the tasting bottles next time.
These cards are also from Montessori Print Shop and would be great for young kids as well as anyone who needs work on categorization.
This presentation start to finish plus extensions took about two hours, but it was enjoyed immensely. I’m not sure I’ve laughed so hard in a while. 🙂
