• Skip to secondary menu
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer
  • Home
  • About
    • Email Me
    • Disclosure & Copyright
  • Start Here
  • Subscribe
  • Privacy Policy
  • Books for Moms

Creative Family Fun

Your one-stop shop for kids activities and family fun

  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Pinterest
  • Twitter
  • Spelling Activities
  • Family Fun
  • STEM
  • Movie Night
  • Toddler Activities
You are here: Home / Learning Activities / Science / Making Butter – Little House Inspired Science

Making Butter – Little House Inspired Science

March 7, 2017 By Terri Thompson

Sharing is caring!

353 shares
  • Share5
  • Tweet

Have you ever tried making butter?

It seems far-fetched, doesn’t it?

But, actually, it’s not. It’s all about science.

Once you know the science behind butter, you can make it any time. All you need are a few simple supplies to do this fun kitchen science project.

Learn the science behind making butter with this fun kitchen science experiment inspired by the Little House book series.

Disclosure: This post contains Amazon Affiliate links. Please see my Disclosure Page for more details.

My girls and I have been reading the Little House series every night at bedtime. I loved this series as a child, and I’m so happy to be passing along this series to my own kids. They love it too.

The many detailed descriptions of pioneer life in the books has inspired us to do a few science experiments.

We were struck by how many times the Ingalls family had to make something that we are used to buying in a store, especially some of the food products, like butter as described in Little House in the Big Woods.

Ma didn’t know the science behind making butter when she taught Laura and Mary how to do it. But, science it was. You don’t make butter by mixing together a few ingredients. You make butter by changing one ingredient, cream, into something else, butter.

Learn the science behind making butter with this fun kitchen science experiment inspired by the Little House book series.

Table of Contents

  • Gather your supplies
  • Make the butter
  • What does the shaking do?
  • Our conclusion
  • Storybook Science

Gather your supplies

You only need a few simple supplies for this project. The most important supplies are some heavy cream and a mason jar with lid.

You will also need a measuring cup and a strainer.

To add a bit of math and technology to the project, have a timer or a timer app on hand.

Learn the science behind making butter with this fun kitchen science experiment inspired by the Little House book series.

Make the butter

Use your measuring cup to measure 2/3 cup of your cream.

Pour the cream in the jar and put the lid on tight.

Now, it’s time to shake and you’ve got to shake a lot. We passed it around between three of us, so no one got too tired from the shaking.

We used a time app on my phone to see how long it took us to make butter and it came in at a little over 8 minutes. That’s a lot of shaking!

Learn the science behind making butter with this fun kitchen science experiment inspired by the Little House book series.

What does the shaking do?

While we were shaking, the molecules in the cream were moving around. The agitation caused the fat molecules to separate and join together.

We accomplished this by shaking a jar. Ma, Mary, and Laura accomplished this with a butter churn. The motion of the churn’s stick moving up and down had the same effect as our jar shaking.

Our cream started out as a liquid and as we shook it started transforming. When we stopped hearing the liquid move around, we stopped to observe what was happening. We took a peek and found whipped cream.

When you hit the whipped cream stage, you’ve got to keep going. The shaking is harder to do, so shake as hard as you can. Suddenly, in a split second, everything changes. You’ll hear a solid substance plopping about inside your jar.

Stop the timer, you’ve got butter. You’ve successfully rearranged the molecules in your cream.

Learn the science behind making butter with this fun kitchen science experiment inspired by the Little House book series.

Our conclusion

Once we had butter, we opened up the jar to see the butter sitting in a liquid.

We used our strainer to separate our butter from the buttermilk. (That’s how buttermilk got it’s name, it’s the liquid left over from making butter.)

We took it one step further and used our measuring cup to see how much buttermilk we had. We measured 1/3 cup of measurement. So our 2/3 cup of cream split in two. One half was fat molecules which made our butter and the other half was the remaining buttermilk.

Learn the science behind making butter with this fun kitchen science experiment inspired by the Little House book series.

You’ve just made butter. Can you believe it?

This is one science experiment that results in a completely safe and edible product. So get out the bread and spread a little butter on it. You’ve got to taste your results.

Storybook Science

We did this project as part of the Storybook Science series from Inspiration Laboratories. Click the image below to see all the science projects inspired by favorite children’s books.

Storybook Science

Learn the science behind making butter with this fun kitchen science experiment inspired by the Little House book series.

If you enjoyed this post, the above photo is perfect for sharing on Facebook. Or, you can Pin the image below.

Learn the science behind making butter with this fun kitchen science experiment inspired by the Little House book series.

You may also like one of these fun science projects:

Erupting Mount Vesuvius: Combing History with Science at Creative Family Fun

Hot Chocolate Science at Creative Family Fun

Color Mixing Lab at Creative Family Fun

The following two tabs change content below.
  • Bio
  • Latest Posts

Terri Thompson

Terri is a writer and mom of two elementary-aged girls. She has a passion for learning and is always looking for ways to make learning fun. You can find her here writing about fun learning activities, art, craft, and family fun ideas.

Latest posts by Terri Thompson (see all)

  • Thanksgiving Math Activities for Kids - November 10, 2022
  • Paper Plate Tambourine Kids Craft - May 15, 2022
  • Outdoor Shape Activities for Kids - May 9, 2022

Recent Posts

  • Thanksgiving Math Activities for Kids
  • Paper Plate Tambourine Kids Craft
  • Outdoor Shape Activities for Kids
  • Shape Hopscotch Outdoor Game
  • Butterfly Paper Plate Wreath Craft

Primary Sidebar

Footer

Categories

Archives

Copyright © 2023 · Designed by The Blog Surgery

Creative Family Fun uses cookies to improve your experience. These cookies provide feedback to our analytics and advertisers. We use the information to track views of the site, where you go and to know if you are a regular visitor or brand new as well as provide a personalized experience where possible. We'll assume you're ok with this, but you can opt-out if you wish.Accept Reject Read More
Privacy & Cookies Policy

Privacy Overview

This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. But opting out of some of these cookies may affect your browsing experience.
Necessary
Always Enabled
Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. This category only includes cookies that ensures basic functionalities and security features of the website. These cookies do not store any personal information.
Non-necessary
Any cookies that may not be particularly necessary for the website to function and is used specifically to collect user personal data via analytics, ads, other embedded contents are termed as non-necessary cookies. It is mandatory to procure user consent prior to running these cookies on your website.
SAVE & ACCEPT
353 shares
  • 5