The Polar Express Hot Chocolate
🎓 Skills Your Child Will Develop
- 🔬 Science & Engineering — Projects that must actually function — a structure that holds weight, a boat that floats, a plant that grows — teach engineering principles through direct experience that textbook learning can't replicate.
- 🤸 Fine & Gross Motor Skills — The physical work of real projects — hammering, rolling, cutting, digging, sewing — builds both fine and gross motor development in an authentic, purposeful context that motivates full physical engagement.
- 🤝 Collaboration — Projects done with a parent, sibling, or group require negotiating roles, dividing tasks, and integrating different contributions — developing the collaborative skills that every complex adult endeavor requires.
- 💡 Design Thinking — Imagining what a project will look like before building it, adjusting the design when it doesn't work, and refining until satisfied introduces the iterative design thinking cycle that underlies engineering, art, and innovation.
Invite the magic feeling of the holidays into your home by making this simple, quick, and cozy recipe with your preschoolers. Enhance the magic by reading The Polar Express by Chris Van Allsburg, with your preschooler while you make the hot cocoa. Watch your preschoolers enjoy "hot cocoa as thick and rich as melted chocolate bars" just as the children do while riding The Polar Express. (quote from The Polar Express)
What You Will Need
The recipe below makes one cup of hot chocolate!
1 teaspoon of Hershey's Cocoa
2 teaspoons of sugar
Approximately 12 ounces of milk
A dash of salt
A dash of vanilla
Assorted mini chocolate bars
Candy canes or peppermint flavoring (optional)
How To Make It
Mix Cocoa, sugar, milk, salt, and vanilla
Put the mixture in a microwavable mug, microwave for 1 and a half minutes or until warm
Drop a mini chocolate bar into the hot cocoa, stir as the chocolate melts
Add a touch of peppermint flavoring or put a candy cane in the hot cocoa for stirring
Top hot chocolate with whip cream and chocolate shavings, or with festive marshmallows
Enjoy!
Make It More Challenging
For added fun, read The Polar Express by Chris Van Allsburg, with your preschooler during this experience. Ask your preschooler what he or she would choose if given the chance to pick the first gift of Christmas.
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Helpful Tips for Parents
- A portfolio of completed projects — photographs collected in a book or digital album — shows developmental progression that motivates continued making.
- Celebrate finished projects with an audience — a small presentation to family, a display at preschool, a photograph sent to grandparents. Public celebration of completed work builds the completion habit.
- The messiest projects often produce the best results. Sand castles, papier-mâché, painting, and clay all require acceptance of chaos during the process.
- Break large projects into small, completable steps. Young children need frequent wins — visible progress — to sustain engagement with a multi-day project.
- Allow projects to take longer than planned. Rushed projects miss the depth that makes them educational. The process is the point; the deadline is secondary.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do I keep a preschooler engaged in a multi-day project?
Multi-day project engagement depends on visible progress at the end of each session and clear anticipation for the next. End each work session at a natural stopping point where something is complete (a layer dried, a section assembled, a chapter written). Review the previous session's work at the start of each new session — reconnecting the child to their progress re-activates motivation. Display in-progress work prominently so children see it throughout the day, generating incidental revisiting and continued investment.
Should adults do projects alongside preschoolers or separately?
Both modes are valuable at different times. Side-by-side making (adult working on their own project while the child works on theirs) models adult creative engagement and normalizes making as a lifelong activity — not just a childhood activity. Collaborative projects (adult and child making one thing together) build shared memory, teach specific techniques, and produce a sense of joint accomplishment. Avoid adult take-over of child projects, where the adult makes most of the decisions and does most of the work with the child watching. The child's project should be primarily the child's work.
Related reading: See also our science experiments guide and our painting projects for more ideas on this topic.
Questions to Ask Your Child
Use these open-ended prompts to extend the learning during or after the activity:
- "What was your favorite part, and what made it special?"
- "What would you do differently next time?"
- "Can you teach me how to do the part you liked best?"
- "What did you notice while we were doing this?"
- "What does this remind you of from somewhere else in your life?"
- "If you could change one thing about this, what would it be?"
There are no right or wrong answers to any of these questions. The goal is to keep the conversation going, model curious thinking, and give your child practice putting their experience into words.
