LI kids rank hot chocolate from popular chains

Isn’t it nice to curl up under a blanket with some hot chocolate and watch a movie? But a question that I ask myself is, what hot chocolate should I get? As the colder weather is with us, hot chocolate is a favorite for so many kids.

Now it was up to the fourth and fifth grades at Idle Hour Elementary School to help me solve my problem.

How did this experiment work?  Here's how: Step one was for my mom and me to go out and buy 7-Eleven, Starbucks, Dunkin’ Donuts and McDonald’s hot chocolate. The following are the prices for a small cup of hot chocolate from each place when I bought them from stores near my house: Dunkin’ Donuts, $2.19; Starbucks, $2.95; 7-Eleven, $1.59; and McDonald's, $2.

The next step was for me to bring in the hot chocolate and have the fourth- and fifth-graders taste all four different ones. In total, 73 students participated, and they absolutely loved it.

I labeled each cup A, B, C or D. Kids wrote down which answer they liked best. After they tasted all four, the winner was Dunkin’ Donuts. Kids said the flavor was the best,  with just the right amount of sweetness, and the chocolate was, as one participant said, “powerful.” The one they liked the least was Starbucks because it was just too dark.

Gina Cerulli’s fifth-grade class, Idle Hour Elementary School, Oakdale