Blind Taste Testing for Science Home Learning!

I was initially going to write up the weeks we were doing home learning and share what it is we're looking at school wise during lock down but surprise, surprise, it's all been rather busy and with 4 children at home doing such a variety of learning I thought I might just write up some of the things we do on and off instead of doing a boring old round up.

The two boys sat smiling excitedly at the table with the food in the middle of them. Both blindfolded and laughing.

We love a good science experiment in this house. We've enjoyed making and exploding volcanoes, making bottles fly like rockets and mixing random things to make all sorts of mess fun. One experiment we always enjoy but haven't done for a long time is a blind taste tasting!

What we used

A variety of foods and sauces (I'll list ours below but this is totally up to you)
A chopping board to hold all our items on
Spoons and/or forks for holding and dipping
A bowl each for any 'emergency 'spit outs' as we called it!
Tissue for cleaning up faces
Paper to record our likes and dislikes.


We did this experiment with A and Will for science. Will has amazing taste buds so I expected him to identify most if not all of  these food items blind. A has sensory processing disorder and can be very sensitive to strong smells and tastes so this was a real test for him!

All the foods and sauces laid out on a black chopping board. Food on the left and sauces on the right.

On our board (pictured above) we had: 

 Chocolate Square cereal
Grapes chopped up small
Banana with peanut butter on top
Raw mushroom
Cheese
Sunflower seeds
Raw onion
Lemon

Sauces

Tomato sauce
Balsamic Vinegar
Mint sauce
Marmite
Chocolate syrup
 BBQ Sauce
Mustard
Soy Sauce
Salad cream

I helped to guide the boys with each food item and recorded what they liked and didn't like and most importantly, if they could guess what food or sauce it was just by smell.

William, as predicted only got 2 slightly wrong. He thought the salad cream was mayonnaise and he thought the vinegar was cider vinegar. A also did really well. He struggled with the more 'out there' sauces such as the soy sauce and vinegar. Both boys knew straight away what they were in for with the mustard which was hilarious.

A in a spider man t shirt holding a spoon of mind sauce for testing wearing his black blindfold

Out of the foods, they both guessed them all right but didn't like all of them. Will hates bananas but managed to get the peanut butter off without looking instead! A isn't a fan of cheese on it's own and wasn't keen on the raw mushroom. I was really surprised both boys knew which seed I had used.

Will in a tiger suit with a blindfold holding a spoon ready to eat some mint sauce

This was a really fun experiment that made us all laugh. 

You can choose whatever items you like to put on your board. Sometimes this is a good way of helping children who are a bit fussy to eat foods they don't normally like to eat when they see them. If you were  going to do this I don't recommended using anything with very strong flavours or that any foods you know they hate because then you'll probably lose them for any more testing!

Scrap book with what food was liked and not liked and a labelled photo of all the foods and sauces.

Because this was for home learning, the boys wrote everything up in some scrap books we bought them. I hope when they hand this in to their teachers they'll really love their work.

*And in the interests of being safe I have to add that I made sure all items of food were small enough to swallow, drinks on stand by and they had constant supervision, after all eating blind could be a bit of a choke hazard if not done properly!*

Do let me know if you've tried this before if you plan to. I'd love to know how it goes! 

6 comments:

  1. I think I might try this with my two just to do something a bit different from all the writing. It looks like a lot of fun x

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    1. That's why we did it, thought it would mix things up a bit! Hope you have fun doing it!x

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  2. It's a crazy time, but I'm glad you and your family are well and having fun learning at home.

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  3. A simple and fun science experiment. I think I should try a few with my kid too. He loves science, and honestly, he is quite bored at home. I am sure he will love these experiments. I do hope I find some time away from work – which is next to impossible for someone like me, who provides US Ebook writing service. All the writers can relate to it, I guess.

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