churning

Part of the kids' Museum Explorers class this week was making butter. The fabulous Ms Nicky showed a couple of styles of butter churns, including a glass one that the kids made their butter in, starting with heavy cream.


First they discussed where the cream came from. They learned proper milking technique on "Chester", the museum's plastic cow. Then they took turns shaking the cream up before pouring it into the butter churn.


Zoo Boy takes a turn at the churn. Each of the kids had several turns. Ms Nicky had several turns. The moms in the room got at least one turn each. We were just starting to worry that it wasn't going to happen before class ended, when suddenly, voila! It was butter!




Ms Nicky carefully separates out the butter and the buttermilk. She put the butter into cups for the kids to take home (and add a bit of salt to so that it tastes more like what they are used to from the store), and let kids sample the buttermilk (which was to most of their likings), and sent home the rest of it with a mom who wanted to make buttermilk pancakes out of it.

J proudly displays his butter. We brought both boys' butter home, spread it on bread, and enjoyed it!