Every morning my husband brews a cup of tea, an endless point of fascination for Travis. So today, I set up a game that would give him ample time to play with tea!

First, I gathered all the different teas in the house and brewed a small cup of each – as luck would have it, we had quite a variety, from black tea to turmeric tea to chamomile, which made for a nice variety of colors.

Once the cups had cooled enough, I removed the tea bags and set Travis up with heavy paper. First we squeezed the tea bags directly over the paper to observe what happened…

But then he much preferred to spoon on the tea liquid. This went on for quite some time!

I offered him an eye dropper, thinking it might be nice practice, but the spoon was the definite favorite.

Towards the end, we returned to rubbing the bags directly on the paper, resulting in little flakes of tea leaf left behind, which gave it a cool look!

I set the paper aside to dry, but the fun didn’t end there! Travis wanted to play with the leftover tea water and tea leaves for a while. We talked a lot about what we could smell, and why some of the teas were a lighter color than others.

My favorite look was the slightly yellowed-paper effect from the turmeric tea.

After our “maps” had dried, I drew a sample treasure map for Travis, and explained to him what maps are used for, and he decorated another.

If you want, make your map lead to real treasure, like a little toy or snack hidden around the house! We would definitely do this activity again.