Dandelion juice and Amber Nectar

After lots of encouraging comments on my dandelion posts (here and here),
Me and the children wanted to make some dandelion juice.
I wanted the children to investigate the dandelions before we made the juice.
I had no lesson plan, but anyway I prefer to have open ended learning,
where the sky is the limit!
We went and picked a pile of dandelions, put them on the table, sat back and admired them and let the talking and investigating begin.

Reuben chose to do a pollen print, dabbing the dandelion straight on to paper.

The older two chose to slice a dandelion in two and look at the flower parts.

Out came the microscope for a closer look.

We had a go at drawing some dandelions.
First we talked about what would be the best media to represent the petals.
The girls chose wax crayons. One of my best charity shop finds is a large set of crayola colouring pencils and wax crayons. In the box set of crayola crayons they have a 'dandelion yellow' crayon.
I love it when the children are drawing and they ask for an exact shade:
"Can you pass me the coronation pink?"

On to making the juice.
We didn't follow a recipe but had got ideas from the internet.

First collect the petals.

Place in a large pan with water and sugar ( I guessed amounts).
Simmer for about two hours, and then leave to cool.

Sieve to remove the petals.

We saved sieved dandelion petals, spread it flat and let it dry.
We've cut some shapes from it, hopefully start of a natural mobile.

And enjoy! I love this photo of Jemima, "Mmm not sure!"

Our best description of Dandelion juice would be a cross between carrot and honey.

And here are the girls drinking nectar. Do your children do this?
I only know of one other family that do this, and they introduced my girls to it.
So I would love to hear of any other nectar drinking children!