November is a great time to learn about things long ago. You’re easily able to tie it into Thanksgiving and into how they did things long ago. Making butter in the classroom is one of our favorite activities to do this month. Perfect to fit right into your social studies and science time.

Supplies you’ll need

small baby food jars -ask friends or students parents that have babies to save them for you. I’ve even got them from a local swip-swap page before for free.

heavy whipping cream

bread to taste the butter with

making butter

Label clean, small baby food jars with the student’s names. I like to pair the students up for this activity as it gives them an opportunity to work together to make the butter. Fill the jars about half-way with cream and secure the lid on tightly.

Now comes the fun part. Have the students shake their jars vigorously. Having a partner allows each child to have plenty of time shaking the jar but also gives them a break. They will need to shake the jar for about 10 minutes until the butter has congealed into a little ball (there will also be a separated liquid called whey). Viola, you have butter!

While the students are taking turns shaking their jar, I made a free printable for them to work on. It’s a fun page to go over the ingredients, how they made the butter and whether they like it or not when they tasted it. You can download the free printable at the bottom of the post.

Now comes the best part, tasting the butter! I just brought a loaf of french bread from the grocery store and had the students add their butter.

After we were all done making the butter and with our papers, we went around the room asking if they like the butter or not and we created an anchor chart to graph our findings. It was a majority yes in our class.