Making Homemade Butter is a lot of Work!

Line of Inquiry:  perspective

There are many similarities and difference between the way people live today and the way people lived long ago.  Today we explored how foods were prepared and preserved in the olden days.  We chose to make butter and compare it to store bought butter from Stongs Supermarket.  A common theme for the children was the shaking the jar was hard work and that their arms were very sore.  Before there was refrigeration, people used cool cellars or ice houses where ice could be stored 

(under sawdust often) .  But mostly food was preserved by smoking, salting or drying it.

The children enjoyed "the fruits of their labour" more than the store bought butter, however, they did not like the idea of having to make butter every week as opposed to having the convenience of buying butter from the store.  When asked what "convenience" meant I told them it means that it is easier to buy butter than it is to make it from scratch.  They all agreed.  It was at this point that Mila noticed the plastic Stongs grocery bag that the cream and crackers came in.  All of the children were familiar with these bags and we wondered what they used in the olden days if there were no plastic grocery bags.  In the olden days baskets were used to haul and store food and so Earth group will be weaving and painting their own baskets.