The first was using our five senses. My son's home school work was on the five senses and I had just purchased three gallons of raw milk. The cream had gathered gloriously at the top and I decided I was going to help my two oldest use all their five senses and make butter at the same time! The kids could help in so many different ways. I find that this is very important when considering full family activities. How much are the kiddos going to get to participate and not get perpetually redirected by the parental units. Butter is one of those things that is low stress for both age demographics. So here ya go:
Either buy cream from the store(half and half) or like me wait for the raw whole milk to settle. Use your EYES to see if it looks like this:
Then skim off the very top as much as you can get and as little of the second layer as possible. The top will be very thick. Put it in a container you can seal very tight.
Because you are all now going to take turns shaking it. To speed up the process you can put clean marbles or rocks in the container. Shake shake shake, it helps if you all sing a bit at this point but stop singing every so often and listen. Pretty soon the cream is going to start SOUNDING more watery it is going to LOOK a little more white with chunks(butter). Get a metal bowl and put ice and water in it. Once the cream has separated and connected to itself(this is why) use a spatula to get it all out of the container and into the ice water. You are now going to rinse the butter. My kids felt the cream and then felt the butter to see if they could FEEL the difference. I had them smell both as well and it was amazing when my three year old's eyes lit up and she said, "Mom, the butter smells like ice cream!" Well, um, yeah.
As you can see my oldest was taking the pictures, my middle and youngest were helping me clean the butter. Roll it around in the ice water then dump the water. Refill the bowl and start again until the water runs clear. This part of the process will keep the butter from getting rancid. We do not add any salt because we love the sweet cream butter flavor on our toast in the morning.
So we used all our senses but their favorite was taste! We spread our fresh butter on crackers and yum!
The second thing we did was try to describe sound waves and our ear drum. Stretch plastic wrap super tight over one bowl then put oatmeal on the middle at the top. Get another bowl, put a lid tight on it as well. Then get a big stirring spoon and smack the second bowl in the area of the oatmeal. Then you will see the oatmeal dance to the drumming. My kids LOVED this.
i hope to not be so very remiss in posting to this in the future.
