Making Butter

It was a brilliant idea! The younger classes could make butter. It would be quick and easy - a bonus foods lab. Generally, I come to regret those "brilliant" ideas. You'd think I'd learn. I never do.

It's not that I couldn't imagine the challenges. I could, and did! Yet, the students still manage to surprise me.

I rounded up some baby food jars, thanks to my kind colleagues. More than enough to have 3 classes work with a partner. Did some after-school math (I try to avoid that) to calculate how much cream I needed for 3 classes to make butter. (It took just less than 1 litre. Half of what I expected).

With jars, cream, and gluten-free rice crackers (that's a story for another time), our adventures in butter-churning began.

I don't like to do a lot of front end loading. I like to see what the students know and what they can predict. I gave the 3 different classes various amounts of information. Mostly, I just gave them their cream filled bottle and told them to shake.

How long do we have to shake for?
What's supposed to happen?
What are we making?
(We're making butter. I did this in grade one)
Oh.
Why is mine lumpy?
(That's the butter)
Teacher! Why did you put butter in mine? I thought we were making it from scratch!

At the end of three classes over two different days, I would call it a success. They took their little glob of white butter and happily ate their crackers. Some left declaring that they were going to try it at home. (Yay!) Only one set of partners broke their jar. Some daringly drank the buttermilk.

I'm not sure yet if I'll repeat the lab next term. I learned that I should really have identical jars with identical lids, not similar jars with similar lids. I'd like something that fastens on better than baby food jar lids. It was less expensive than I feared since we only used half the crackers and half the cream (you'll probably notice that I'm quite obsessed with this budget business). We'll see what other "brilliant" ideas I come up with as the year progresses.

Next projects: applesauce for the 6/7s and potato skins for the 8s.