We are rowing The Rag Coat this week and since I have been wanting to make butter for a while now I snagged the chance to introduce it to the kids.
We started with 32 oz of heavy whipping cream and a large glass jar. I had heard that putting a marble in might help with agitating the cream, but I was afraid it might hit the jar wrong and we would end up with a huge mess! Instead, I just put a heavy plastic kids spoon.
Next came the shaking....... lots and lots of shaking. To brake up the monotony we alternated between jogging around the room with it, rolling it back and forth on the floor, and practicing counting by ones, twos, tens, and hundreds while vigorously shaking. After about ten minutes it didn't feel like the cream was moving much anymore. Our view through the glass was a solid white jar. When I unscrewed the top it looked like super smooth whipping cream.
After another 5 minutes the cream began to break up a bit.
2 minutes later it began breaking up even more and we could see through the jar again. Then we suddenly had butter! The buttermilk began to separate out and we had a huge lump of nice yellow butter in our jar.
We used a strainer to pour the buttermilk off. The buttermilk is actually sweet, rather than the sour stuff you buy from the store, since the cream wasn't soured beforehand. The kids each had a small taste and we are left with 1 1/2 cups for cooking.
After separating the butter we rinsed it by covering it with clean cold water and kneading until the water was discolored. Then we poured off the water and repeated for a total of 4 rinses. This helps to remove the remaining buttermilk and prevents the butter from becoming rancid.
We were left with a little over a cup of yummy butter! I did find that this butter was a little bland and I think that might have something to do with the ultra-pasteurized cream we used. I would love to try this using cream from raw milk, but that would be a little cost-prohibitive and difficult to find. Next time I might look for low pasteurized cream or try making cultured butter with yogurt. For now I think I will add some fresh herbs and enjoy our freshly homemade butter!
Thursday, October 30, 2008
Monday, October 13, 2008
Stellaluna and Bat Unit Study
This was actually a unscheduled study on bats since one of our local parks was having a presentation on bats this past week. I thought it might be fun to squeeze it in!
We read the book Stellaluna which was already in our book collection, and hit the library for some supplemental reading. One book I think is worth mentioning is The Little Lost Bat. It follows the life of a baby Mexican free-tailed bat as it is born in a cave. The book itself was quite sad as the baby loses its mother to an owl and eventually is adopted by another bat mother that has lost its own baby. It does quite a good job of showing the hardships that baby bats face.
Here are some pictures of our lapbook. We got most of the graphics for our lapbook from our favorite site Homeschool Share. The cover has some cutouts that we found at First-school.ws . I reduced the size by 50% to fit two on the cover. Hailey and Charlie loved playing with the full size versions that they put together.
The inside front cover shows a booklet with different species of bats (bumblebee bat, fox bat, vampire bat, etc). On the first side of the folder we have a book of different diurnal (daytime) and nocturnal animals, a vocabulary pocket of words from Stellaluna, a book with a map of the places that we can find fruit bats (mega bats). The left side shows a three pocket strip that we got from Hands of a Child where we sorted different characteristics of Mega bats and Micro bats. On the right flap is a flap book of Omnivores, Herbivores, and Carnivores. Under each flap Hailey glued pictures of the animals that belong in each category.
The second side of the folder shows the Anatomy of the Bat, the different mammals that use echolocation, and a booklet that uses some word problems pulled from the book for math. The left flap shows a sample of handwriting. Since I am teaching Hailey cursive instead of print first I invested in software called Start Write. I can print out tracers in almost any learning font I wish, which for me is cursive. They also have manuscript, Handwriting without Tears cursive and print, Palmer and more! I love this software. The right flap has some really corny bat jokes on one side and some a poem and song about bats on the back.
The back cover shows Hailey's art work. She started drawing the little lines for echolocation without any prompting. I asked where she got the idea to do that and she said she had seen it in a book we read. I love that she picks those things up. The insects all have frowny faces because they are about to be eaten!
We read the book Stellaluna which was already in our book collection, and hit the library for some supplemental reading. One book I think is worth mentioning is The Little Lost Bat. It follows the life of a baby Mexican free-tailed bat as it is born in a cave. The book itself was quite sad as the baby loses its mother to an owl and eventually is adopted by another bat mother that has lost its own baby. It does quite a good job of showing the hardships that baby bats face.
Here are some pictures of our lapbook. We got most of the graphics for our lapbook from our favorite site Homeschool Share. The cover has some cutouts that we found at First-school.ws . I reduced the size by 50% to fit two on the cover. Hailey and Charlie loved playing with the full size versions that they put together.
The inside front cover shows a booklet with different species of bats (bumblebee bat, fox bat, vampire bat, etc). On the first side of the folder we have a book of different diurnal (daytime) and nocturnal animals, a vocabulary pocket of words from Stellaluna, a book with a map of the places that we can find fruit bats (mega bats). The left side shows a three pocket strip that we got from Hands of a Child where we sorted different characteristics of Mega bats and Micro bats. On the right flap is a flap book of Omnivores, Herbivores, and Carnivores. Under each flap Hailey glued pictures of the animals that belong in each category.
The second side of the folder shows the Anatomy of the Bat, the different mammals that use echolocation, and a booklet that uses some word problems pulled from the book for math. The left flap shows a sample of handwriting. Since I am teaching Hailey cursive instead of print first I invested in software called Start Write. I can print out tracers in almost any learning font I wish, which for me is cursive. They also have manuscript, Handwriting without Tears cursive and print, Palmer and more! I love this software. The right flap has some really corny bat jokes on one side and some a poem and song about bats on the back.
The back cover shows Hailey's art work. She started drawing the little lines for echolocation without any prompting. I asked where she got the idea to do that and she said she had seen it in a book we read. I love that she picks those things up. The insects all have frowny faces because they are about to be eaten!
Monday, October 6, 2008
Storm in the Night Lapbook
So here is our completed lapbook for our the Storm in the Night. We used some materials from Homeschool Share, but for the most part I made my own graphics for this one. Feel free to click on the links and download them for your own personal not-for-profit use.
The left flap involved a discussion on how our bodies change as well as how our roles change as we get older. I used a cute picture that I found here. The right flap has a Venn diagram depicting the characteristics of Grandfather and Thomas and a Vocabulary flap book with pictures for the vocabulary words errands, bough, and mandarin. We added in the word babbling and wrote "blah, blah, blah" under the flap. In the middle you can see our introduction to onomatopoeia. Hailey now shouts out "Onomatopoeia" every time she recognizes one in a book. You can get those graphics here. We made a facial expressions booklet. And the book about our listening walk.
The second side of the folder shows a large diagram of the Water cycle in the middle. The cloud booklet opens up and shows the water droplets that a cloud is made of. Then the raindrops were drawn directly on the folder. The left flap has a pocket with pictures of 4 different cloud types. I got the cloud pictures here.The pocket on the right flap is holding cloud charts that we used each day to see if we could predict the weather by observing the clouds.
On the back cover is the painting that Hailey did with a dark background.
To find out more in depth about what we did during the week check out the previous post! Next week we will be doing BATS!
The left flap involved a discussion on how our bodies change as well as how our roles change as we get older. I used a cute picture that I found here. The right flap has a Venn diagram depicting the characteristics of Grandfather and Thomas and a Vocabulary flap book with pictures for the vocabulary words errands, bough, and mandarin. We added in the word babbling and wrote "blah, blah, blah" under the flap. In the middle you can see our introduction to onomatopoeia. Hailey now shouts out "Onomatopoeia" every time she recognizes one in a book. You can get those graphics here. We made a facial expressions booklet. And the book about our listening walk.
The second side of the folder shows a large diagram of the Water cycle in the middle. The cloud booklet opens up and shows the water droplets that a cloud is made of. Then the raindrops were drawn directly on the folder. The left flap has a pocket with pictures of 4 different cloud types. I got the cloud pictures here.The pocket on the right flap is holding cloud charts that we used each day to see if we could predict the weather by observing the clouds.
On the back cover is the painting that Hailey did with a dark background.
To find out more in depth about what we did during the week check out the previous post! Next week we will be doing BATS!
Friday, October 3, 2008
A Storm in the Night
This past week we rowed Five in a Row (FIAR) title A Storm in the Night. I decided to go ahead and row this book since we had been inundated with thunderstorms the previous several weeks. Of course, as soon as we started we had nothing but sunny skies!
A Storm in the Night proved to be a bit more difficult at first than our first FIAR book The Story About Ping. The book was mostly dialogue and in order to help the kids follow the book a bit easier I used different voices for the characters.
We discussed the use of onomatopoeia for the first time. I realized that we had a wonderful supplemental book for this discussion called The Listening Walk by Paul Showers. Every single page has a new sound that the young girl hears as she goes on her listening walk with her father. We decided to go on our own listening walk and talk about the different sounds that we could hear. Then we figured out how we could make those sounds into words and made our own book .
We discussed how we know people are feeling by the expressions they have on their face. We made a mini booklet drawing the characteristics of different facial expressions. I also dug out some old pictures so that Hailey could note the changes as people get older.
For science we focused in on the Water Cycle. We made our model of earth and its atmosphere by taking a plate of water and placing it in one side of a large tupperware container. We closed the top and placed a heat lamp above the side of the tupperware with the water to represent the sun. On the opposite side we placed a bag of ice cubes to represent the cold air in the upper atmosphere. As the lamp (sun) heated the water the water evaporated (turned to water vapor) and condensed (formed a cloud) as it rose and hit the bag of ice (cold air) on the opposite side. Once the water droplets became large enough they fell (rained) back to the plate (ground).
We also decided to learn more about clouds. We learned four of the basic types of clouds - Stratus, Cumulus, Cirrus, and Nimbus. I found some great pictures of clouds here, Royalty free! We charted what clouds we saw in the morning and guessed what type of weather we would see that afternoon. In the afternoon we would check the weather again to see if we were right. I also had Hailey make a rain gauge out of an old peanut butter jar and a ruler. I took the top off of the jar, turned it upside-down and filled it with spare change to weight it down. Then I taped it with packing tape to the bottom of the jar to keep it from blowing away.
These are some of the graphics that I created while doing the lapbook for A Storm in the Night. Please feel free to download and use for your own personal, not-for-profit, use.
Onomatopoeia
Facial Expressions Booklet
Cloud Charting
Water Cycle
Cloud Types - Thanks to Carl Wozniak for the great cloud pics on this graphic. You can get more here free for educational purposes.
I will be posting pictures of our completed lapbook in the next couple of days.
A Storm in the Night proved to be a bit more difficult at first than our first FIAR book The Story About Ping. The book was mostly dialogue and in order to help the kids follow the book a bit easier I used different voices for the characters.
We discussed the use of onomatopoeia for the first time. I realized that we had a wonderful supplemental book for this discussion called The Listening Walk by Paul Showers. Every single page has a new sound that the young girl hears as she goes on her listening walk with her father. We decided to go on our own listening walk and talk about the different sounds that we could hear. Then we figured out how we could make those sounds into words and made our own book .
We discussed how we know people are feeling by the expressions they have on their face. We made a mini booklet drawing the characteristics of different facial expressions. I also dug out some old pictures so that Hailey could note the changes as people get older.
For science we focused in on the Water Cycle. We made our model of earth and its atmosphere by taking a plate of water and placing it in one side of a large tupperware container. We closed the top and placed a heat lamp above the side of the tupperware with the water to represent the sun. On the opposite side we placed a bag of ice cubes to represent the cold air in the upper atmosphere. As the lamp (sun) heated the water the water evaporated (turned to water vapor) and condensed (formed a cloud) as it rose and hit the bag of ice (cold air) on the opposite side. Once the water droplets became large enough they fell (rained) back to the plate (ground).
We also decided to learn more about clouds. We learned four of the basic types of clouds - Stratus, Cumulus, Cirrus, and Nimbus. I found some great pictures of clouds here, Royalty free! We charted what clouds we saw in the morning and guessed what type of weather we would see that afternoon. In the afternoon we would check the weather again to see if we were right. I also had Hailey make a rain gauge out of an old peanut butter jar and a ruler. I took the top off of the jar, turned it upside-down and filled it with spare change to weight it down. Then I taped it with packing tape to the bottom of the jar to keep it from blowing away.
These are some of the graphics that I created while doing the lapbook for A Storm in the Night. Please feel free to download and use for your own personal, not-for-profit, use.
Onomatopoeia
Facial Expressions Booklet
Cloud Charting
Water Cycle
Cloud Types - Thanks to Carl Wozniak for the great cloud pics on this graphic. You can get more here free for educational purposes.
I will be posting pictures of our completed lapbook in the next couple of days.
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