Making Orange Juice

I like to let the kids make their own orange juice once or twice a week (it's actually made with clementines not oranges, but we call it orange juice anyway).  It's a great Montessori motor-skills exercise with cutting, squeezing, and pouring practice. It is also useful for being able to describe the sequence of events (they tell me what we do first, what comes next, etc..).

Here are some pictures of the kids making their own juice:

The twins (31 months old) are not strong enough to really squeeze all the juice out, so for that part we either do it together or take turns.  Usually two clementines only produce a shot-glass full of juice, but it's the process that counts.  I always try to sneak in some liquid vitamins into the juice since the Vitamin C from citrus products helps with iron absorption.

In the past, we would also include a lengthy first step that involved scrubbing the clementines and then rinsing them in water, which the girls loved to do.  Unfortunately, my husband decided that the wonderful fruit-and-vegetable-scrubbers we had would be great for cleaning the bathroom, so we've stopped that part until I can get some replacement scrubbers.