Shaking Butter

The kids and I are reading through the Little House on the Prairie books, starting with The Little House in the Big Woods. We're loving the book! Inspired by the Ingalls we are having fun with a few crafts as we read through the books. Our first activity was homemade butter. We don't own a cow or a goat (yet!) and we don't have a butter churn, instead we used a clean jar with a secure lid, and heavy cream bought from our local grocery store. We filled our jar half way with cream and started shaking. We had two jars, and I let the big kids go first while the little ones were able to have a turn when their older siblings arms became tired. The kids had to shake the jar for maybe 10 to 15 minutes before the cream turned to whip cream, and then finally butter sitting in a jar of buttermilk! The kids loved this project. They had so much fun, that they couldn't stop talking about it all day. We squeezed the buttermilk out of the butter and separated the liquid and the butter into two different containers. To enjoy the fruits of their labor the kids then baked some fresh homemade bread to go with their butter. We saved the buttermilk, which I plan to use to make some buttermilk pancakes.