In Science, the girls (along with my little man) and I have been studying birds and flight, so on Tuesday, we decided to make butter. I’m sure one is asking what the two have in common. Nothing. There is nothing in common between learning about flight and how it works and butter-making. It really boils down to the fact that the house has been hit hard with the flu, and stopping to make butter just seemed like fun. We read our chapter on flight, drew our diagrams, and headed into the kitchen for some fun (don’t worry. The flight-related experiments will happen next week when everyone recovers from the flu). Keep in mind that the participants of the butter making were not demonstrating flu symptoms, and we scrubbed our hands well before starting. Though, I don’t think it would matter anyway considering the airborne nature of this particular “bug”.

Before we started, we paused to watch a video from our favorite, The Happy Scientist, Robert Krampf. The butter making video was posted on The Well-Trained Mind forums last week. When it came time to do something fun, I had that video still fresh in my mind. I’ve made butter in the past, years ago, with the older children, but I had not done so with some of the younger ones. It was time.

The first thing that we did was watch the video.

Next, we gathered our supplies. We needed a jar. I wanted to use a canning jar, but I didn’t have any. I’m not sure where they all went. Because we’ll be moving soon, I didn’t want to buy some just to have to worry about packing more glass later. My original jar was an old, but clean, spaghetti sauce container; however, I couldn’t get the spaghetti sauce smell out of it. So, I settled with using a plastic jam jar. I wasn’t sure if plastic would work as well as glass, but in the end, it did fine.

We also needed heavy whipping cream. The cream needed to stay out of the refrigerator for 12 hours. I set it out overnight with a note telling do-gooders not to do good and put it back in the refrigerator (or throw it in the trash).

The other supplies were simple. Just needed some clean water, bowl, and some bread.

We poured the cream into the clean jar.

Then, we took turns shaking it. However, we did not shake it too vigorously and followed the instructions on the video.

And, we shook it.

Soon, the cream pulled away from the sides of the jar, and it started to feel more solid.

We drained the buttermilk from the jar into a bowl. After that, we added some clean water, replaced the cap, gave it a shake or two, and poured out the water. This allowed us to rinse the butter.

The butter was spooned into a bowl. It was soft, very soft. The reason for that is probably because the kitchen was extra warm.

Finally, we gave it a taste test. It passed! The butter was delicious. We placed the bowl of soft butter into the refrigerator. Of course, it became more solid. The children, including the older ones, all gathered to sample it throughout the day.

In the end, our experiment was educational, fun, and tasty! While it wasn’t about birds or flight, it certainly made for an enjoyable afternoon.

God bless -

Dorothy

Tags: butter, butter making, Happy Scientist