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Squeezing oranges at BestStart Herewini

This was in preparation for making an orange cake for afternoon tea tomorrow. 
There are so many benefits for young children in squeezing juice. It helps improve the strength and control of the hands which they need to write. Having strong finger and hand muscles helps produce more coordinated markings on paper for a longer period of time. 
This juice squeezing also helped the Tamariki learn knowledge about where our food comes from as we all had a huge discussion about our favourite types of juice and what fruits make them. 
Also the Tamariki work on their sensory knowledge through talking about whether the oranges were sweet, sour or salty. 
We all enjoyed using our super muscles to push, twist and turn the orange of the squeezer then very carefully concentrating to our the juice we had made into the container- which also helped us learn about how much juice is needed to make 1/2 and 1 cup - increasingly our mathematical knowledge. 
Wow we learn so much through such a simple activity!