Hydration Evaluation

I usually let the kids decide what our weekly activity is, but not this week. Briana wanted to learn how a car worked, but I told her that we were doing something different today.   It’s holiday time and everywhere we go we see hot chocolate and apple cider and then the kids have a fit when we come home and I say that they have to drink water.  I decided that I was going to teach them about why we need to stay hydrated in hopes that they will then clamor for water over other options…or more realistically that they at least understand why water is a good choice.

I start out by telling the kids that our bodies are made up of 60% water.  Bree laughs thinking that I am joking.   I tell her that really more than half of your body is water.  She tells me that she thinks we are mostly bone actually, and I tell her that both are true.  She needs proof that there is water inside of us so I ask her - when we’re running around or playing what comes out on our heads.  Sweat.  Yep, water from inside our bodies.  And when we cry, what comes out of our eyes.  Tears.  Yep, more water.  And when we go potty what comes out?  Pee and poop.  Yep, and the pee is more water coming out of our bodies.  Now it makes sense so we move on.

I tell the girls that without our water, our bodies cannot work as well.  When your body is low on water, it is called dehydration.  You know when you are getting dehydrated if you are all sweaty, or your lips are dry, or you feel really dizzy or tired.  What if you wanted to cry and didn’t have any water in your body?  Could you cry?  No.  The kids were quite concerned about not being able to cry.  Bree tells me, “I think I’m dehydranated now.  Let’s get something to drink.”   I correct her pronunciation first.

Before we get a drink I want to show the kids something.  I tell them, you can also tell if you are dehydrated by how dark your pee is.  Sorry to be gross, but we all go to the potty and look at how dark our pee is.  Then we talk about who was the most dehydrated and needed more water.  I’ll spare you the details.  Each of us decides to drink a glass of water before we do our experiment.

I wanted to dry out some grapes and make raisins, but it’s a cold and rainy December and as such we lack both the sunlight and a source of grapes.  A couple of days ago, I told a friend that I was going to have to think of another idea to teach the kids about hydration, and she suggested that we use pasta.  Awesome idea!  Thanks, Audra!  I love anything that we can do as an activity that also gets dinner cooked.  I decide to make regular and a dehydrated version of dinner.  I add thinly sliced apples to the menu for an oven-dehydrated dessert.

We examine the initial stage of our items.

We look at raw spaghetti.  I am surprised to see that the kids are unfamiliar with raw spaghetti.  I guess since it is cooked in boiling water, making pasta tends to be a Mommy only cooking job.  We taste the raw spaghetti.  Pasta is usually Abby’s favorite food.  Apparently this is true whether hydrated or not, and she eats two sticks of raw spaghetti before I stop her.

We look also at a raw apple.  I slice it into the thin slices on my mandolin.  Then we taste a raw, juicy apple.

We make dinner 2 ways.

Since dehydrating the apples takes quite a bit longer than hydrating the pasta, we start the apples long before dinnertime.  I boil some water and slide a steamer over the boiling water to prep the apples.  I steam the apples for 5 minutes.  Then I blanch them in ice water to stop the cooking.  I drain and dry them off before putting them in the oven at 175 degrees.  I want them to dehydrate quickly, so I need to leave the oven door slightly open for one hour, but I have preschoolers and an open oven seemed like a really bad idea.  To get us out of the kitchen, I tell the kids that we need to hydrate our skin first, before we can continue.  They both agree that a shower is a good idea, so we get all showered before returning to finish cooking the dinner and talking about hydration.

While in the shower, we talk about how our hair is nice and soft after it “drinks” up the shower water, and how our skin looks so fresh now – though both the hair and the skin enhancements are more realistically a function of the shampoo, conditioner, and soap used.

When we return downstairs, our apples are almost done.  I let them stay on while we cook the pasta.  First, I let the kids watch me add the dehydrated pasta to the boiling water. 

While the pasta cooks, we make the rest of dinner – a salad.  Everyone has salad making jobs that they like to do because that is the most common thing they help with for dinner.  Today I tell them to watch the other person do her job too. Briana tears open a fresh, organic head of bib lettuce and I show the kids how there is water inside the lettuce that we’d never noticed before.  Then when Bree has torn them all, Abby gets to rinse the lettuce pieces over the sink.  I tell the kids to watch how much brighter green the lettuce gets in the water.  We do the same steps for the broccoli, strawberries, and blueberries that go into our salad (I let the kids pick 2 fruits and 2 vegetables to put in our salads when we make them.).  Then we sprinkle on the finishing touches - homemade vinaigrette that Abby shook to mix, and the feta and croutons that Bree poured.  Bree tosses the salad as I remove the pasta from the stove and drain it. 

Before I add pasta sauce I let the kids taste the pasta hydrated.  We talk about all of the things that changed.  The pasta isn’t as “crackable” now.  It is “softer and bend-ier”.  It is “tastier”.  All of these good things happen when it is hydrated.  Just like with our bodies, when we are hydrated our skin is softer and smoother and we don’t break as easily because we are healthier.  “And tastier” Abby adds, biting her own arm.  At least it was her own arm!

I get the apples out of the oven, and on our plates goes a normal portion of cooked spaghetti with sauce, a few strands of raw spaghetti, a salad, a few slices of raw apple, and a few slices of dehydrated apples.  Dinner was a big hit.  The kids both love the dehydrated apples, which are now crunchy and basically apple chips.  We taste them and talk about it.  How do dehydrated apples taste?  “Fried” said Briana.  It secretly makes me feel like a good mom that since when we eat homemade French fries that are really sliced and baked potatoes, the texture and all was reminiscent of what she thought was a fried food.  While we eat we talk about whether we’re eating hydrated or dehydrated food and what we think.  I think I’ll have to make our little apple chips again.

Abby performs her own experiment and puts one of her apple chips in her water cup.  It rehydrates quite well.

Before we head up for bedtime I show the kids how the spaghetti that we left out to check on was starting to dehydrate again.  For good measure, Briana chugs half a glass of water and then tells Abby, “We better drink our water or our skin could look like those apples did – all wrinkly and cracky.  That’s what happens to old people.”  Lol.

I love the thirst for knowledge that the kids have!

<3 Pedigreed Housewife