We plant an herb garden in the spring that gets bigger and bigger every year. I love to dry the herbs and use them for teas. As our garden becomes bigger we will make more and more of our own teas, but for now we must also buy some. My two favorite tea companies are Traditional Medicinals and Yogi Tea.
Traditional Medicinals has a great line of teas "Just for Kids." They are very tasty and they always calm the ailment they're made for.
They also only use organic and natural ingredients!
The little ladies and I thought it would be fun to take apart some tea bags and use our 5 senses to study them.
The little ladies already knew that tea was simply dried parts of different herbs. They drink it every day, but didn't realize all of the different combinations that can be made to make different tasting teas. So we started really basic. Fauna crumbled up the dried chamomile from the summer garden to make a one flavor tea.
Araina crumbled up the feverfew.....
Then we ripped into the tea bags, I made sure they labeled each tea bag they were investigating. Here's some of the beautiful gems we discovered......
Raspberry Zinger was the prettiest! We found hibiscus, rosehips, chicory, orange peel, blackberry and raspberry pieces in this pretty tea.
My favorite PMS tea is Dong Quai Tonic from Yogi Tea. This is the BEST tea and does wonders! This one had the strongest smell. We found cinnamon, orange peel, ginger, fennel, chamomile, dandelion, anise, stinging nettle, dong quai and black pepper in this very medicinal tea.
Great for the tummies, ginger Yogi Tea. This is beautiful under the microscope, you can see the crystals!
Yummy Trader Jo Organic Mint Melange Tea was another strong smeller! We found peppermint, lemon grass and spearmint in this tea.
The girls picked their favorites, sketched and wrote down the ingredients into their nature journals.
Then we each had to have a cup of tea. Ahhhhh.........Yummy!!!!
18 comments:
Oh yum....I have two wee little chamomile lovers in this house! I think I need to go boil the kettle right now....
btw love the hedgehog!
You are so full of great ideas!
What a wonderful activity! Anything about tea and I am right there. I like herbal tea too... but good old Orange Pekoe is my favourite on a old day.
I am so too (herb tea junkies)! I have almost all the ones in your pictures. I drink the organic kids cold/throat myself. :) I just brought pure peppermint and chamomile tea. I have so many kinds its not even funny. LOL. love this post btw. :) What a great way to teach the kids. Maybe tomorrow I will share a few of my favorites too.
What I also really like about this activity is it teaches thoughtfulness about food/beverage ingredients. I always have lots of tea varieties on hand and my son loves to drink unsweetened herbal ice tea. When I make myself some hot tea he likes his "tea", too, which is actually just warm milk with honey.
What a delicious selection of herbal teas...
Thanks you for the award...:)
Fabulous idea! I'll have to try this with my children.
I love tea! And what a wonderful activity to do with your girls!
We love herbal tea here, too, but I've never even thought to open one of the little bags up to see what's inside! Might have to do this with the girls.
I love the hedgehog pin, by the way. I showed it to the girls and they oohed and aahed over it too. :) You are very talented!
What a great activity for the kids! I'll keep this one in mind for Michael and I. We are huge tea lovers ourselves. Oh and I love the new brooch you made for your Mom, the adorable hedgehog as well!
What a neat activity to share with the children. I want to try it myself! I also appricated the childrens teas you shared I want to go and look for them for my little ones. Thanks so much for posting!
What a great idea! I haven't branched out into herbal teas for my kids yet, but something must have rubbed off on my son because he's always serving up orange tea in his play kitchen! My personal favorite is Bengal Spice from Celestial Seasonings.
How creative and fun! We love our herbal teas as well. I look forward to trying the Don Quai Tonic, thank you for the suggestions!
What a fun investigation!
A couple of months ago Trev asked me what leaves in our gardens were edible, so I looked up a list and made notes for the plants we had.
I think he ate like 30 different leaves!
He didn't like St. John's Wort and something else.... I can't remember, now.
:)
Edible plants are our obsession!! We know all the edible plants in our 5 acres of property...dandelion, chickweed, pine needles, clover etc.... Oh, the yummy stuff nature provides us!
Oh, what a yummy blog. i'll be back later (with a cup of herbal tea lol - my kids also like to sit down with a cuppa in winter) to indulge a little more.
I like that your kids drink tea. In our house, I make cold herbal berry tea to drink instead of juice. We usually drink it with dinner. Something jazzy to drink instead of water. Water gets boring. My girl likes warm tea also, I have to stop her from drinking too much green tea when we go out for Japanese. I have said it before, but I love your ideas.
how wonderful this is. the more i peruse around here, the more inspired and encouraged i am. thank you!
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