Churning Butter

We have been reading "Little House In The Big Woods" and comparing that era with ours. We have been discussing how we would have liked to live back then and also some of the hardships of then and what we would miss from now. We definately like the simplicity back then.
In Chapter two Laura, Mary and Ma made butter from the cream from their cows. We've made butter many times by shaking cream in a small jar. We have a butter churn that has been in my family since it was made. We hadn't used it but thought that we would give it a try today.

Lucy pouring in the cream

We thought that we would start small. We used a half gallon of cream and began churning.

My girlies started churning but only lasted a few minutes each. Then it was my turn. I churned for 20 minutes and check out what our cream turned into. 

We scraped down the sides, strained the contents and got...

two containers of butter and about a quart of buttermilk. We all tried the buttermilk and it actually tastes pretty good. We also enjoyed our freshly made butter on crackers and bread. Too bad we didn't make our own bread today to put the butter on. For any of you who are I Love Lucy fans, like I am, "homemade bread with home-churned butter".

thanks for reading.

Our Presidents

We have had the pleasure of celebrating Presidents' Day today and remembering two of our countries amazing presidents. George Washington was our Founding Father and Abraham Lincoln, who was our 16th president, abolished slavery.
So, in preparation of our vacation day we learned about and did some fun activities about these two great men.

 Washington and Lincoln Books We Read

These are great biographies written for the 3-4 grade level.

Washington and Lincoln Portrait 

When you were a kid did you put crayon shavings between two layers of wax paper and then melt them with an iron? I thought of this the other day and had an idea. I found an image of Lincoln and Washington online and printed them. We put one of the images under wax paper and drew the outline of the facial features.
Then, we made shavings of crayons that were face color, black and greys. You can use a pencil sharpener. Just don't push too hard.

You will want to put a paper towel onto an iron safe surface and place your wax paper on top of the towel. Now, fill in the areas with crayon shavings. Just as Lucy is doing here.

This one is ready to be ironed. (On the first one, we put too much crayon so you may have to play with the amount of shavings.)

When you are done, place a piece of blank waxed paper on top and then another paper towel and iron with your iron on a low setting.

We did Lincoln and Washington. We ran out of white crayons from our Crayon Valentine Hearts so Washington has grey and black hair.

They didn't turn out exactly like I envisioned them but we had fun. Let me know if you make these and how they turn out.

Lincoln's House

We also made a small replica of Lincoln's first house out of "Wooden Skill Sticks". They are popsicle sticks that have notches on them. So you can build like you do with Lincoln Logs.

Lucy's House on left and Mommy's on right

I decided to paint my house brown. So, after we constructed our houses Lucy wrote words on the sides of hers that described Lincoln.

Front: "Lincoln"

Back

Side: "ended slavery!!!!!"

 Happy Presidents' Day! and Thanks for reading and please leave a comment.

Valentine Crayon Hearts

 

As a child, I loved making hand-made Valentine cards for my classmates. I still love making Valentine's cards but now they're for my favorite people, my hubby and two amazing daughters. My daughters are carrying on the tradition of hand made Valentine cards.

Lucy and I went to our homeschooling PSP's Valentine party today. The children had a card exchange. So, of coarse, we wanted to make fun Valentine's cards. Last week, I saw a great idea for cards. Lucy decided that it would be fun to make them. We found out that she needed to bring 40 cards so we knew that it was going to take a little while but it would be fun.

Do you have a bunch of broken up crayons? If you are a mom, I'm sure that you do.

So how about making Valentine Crayon Hearts?

What you'll need:

1. crayons

2. silicone heart baking mold

3. oven

4. x-acto knife (optional)

Step 1:  Remove the wrappers. Some wrappers slip off easily while others don't. For those stubborn ones, use an x-acto knife and slice the wrapper and it can be removed easily.

Step 2: Break or cut the crayons into small pieces

or you can put the crayons in a bag and smash them with a hammer.... my girlies chose this route.

Step 3: Put the broken crayons into the heart mold. You need enough to completely cover the bottom.

Step 4: Bake in a 230 degree oven for about 15 minutes or until all of the crayons are melted. (The smaller you make the pieces of crayon, the faster they melt.)

Step 5: Cool until completely hardened. (We put ours into the freezer to speed up the process.)

Step 6: Once hardened, remove from the molds.

Here are a few of the Valentine Crayon Hearts we made.

And a few more.

We loved making these! And yes, we made 40 of them. Well, actually a few more than 40. All of the children in Lucy's class (and the moms) thought that they were a great idea.

My girlies (and I) have decided that they (we) want to make more this weekend. They definately are a fun craft to make. We thought about getting different shape silicon molds and making different shaped colorful crayons.They are pretty plus they do color. Let me know if you make these.

Thanks for reading and enjoy!