We Made Butter!!

HAPPY MONDAY!!!
I'm smack dab in the middle of Parent Teacher Conferences, but wanted to post before the next round!
I hope your conferences went well and you were able to successfully express glows and grows!

We did one of my favorite science experiments today...turning heaving whipping cream into butter!
Let me back up a tad and give you the first steps in our lesson before we got to the butter!

First we brainstormed ideas about the first "feast" using a bubble map.  The students worked with a partner and came up with wonderful and insightful ideas.  We then shared our thoughts and added to the class' brainstorm of what we knew.

                                     
Next, we read This is the Feast by Diane Z Shore!   This is a phenomenol read about the voyage, hardships, and challenges of the Pilgrims!  It also has a poetic rhyme verse and beat to help capture the reader's attention!  This helped us add other information to our bubble maps-clams, oysters, dogs, cold, death, birch, squash, and corn.

                                    

                                   

Then I had them draw and label our science experiment materials:  knife, heavy whipping cream, oyster crackers, and  baby food jar.  Then they needed to predict in their journals what we were going to do, how, and of course why.   Their predictions were almost straight on, but they were not for sure how it happens.  Next,  we used heavy whipping cream and poured it into the baby food jar and shook, shook, and shook until the liquid turned into a solid- and you have butter!!!!!  (in about 4-5 minutes).  We discussed the results-how and why did the liquid turn into a solid.  Of course we had to eat the butter with something...and out came the oyster crackers (Can you guess why we choose oyster crackers?)  Of course this was not a feast, but they got a feel of life and taste of life in the 1600's! (with a tad of whipping cream)

Smiles,