Dehydrating Fruit

Today we used a dehydrator to dry apples, oranges and lemons in preparation for our holidays gifts. To explain the dehydration process, we asked the question, "what does it mean when something is hydrated."
"There's water. It's juicy." - Cassius 
"Well,then what does it mean when something is dehydrated?"  "It's not juicy." - Cassius 
We predicted what we thought would happens to the fruits when the water was removed. Some said the fruit would get bigger, some thought it would get smaller, others agreed that it would change colors. 
As the children placed the sliced fruit
on the drying racks, we thought it would be interesting to explain the concept of patterns and see if anyone would place the different fruit in a pattern. Some caught on right away and took to making patterns in other areas of the classroom. 







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