Home-made Butter

Hailey and I made butter this week. This is something I used to do with my kindergarten kids the week of thanksgiving. It is easy and it brings back memories for me when I was a girl and had the assignment to churn butter every week from the cream urnished by our Jersey cow, using a paddle type butter churn with a glass bottom. For my kindergarten kids and Hailey all we needed was some clean baby food jars and a carton of whipping cream.
You just put about 1/2 in. of cream in the jar and screw the lid on tight. Then you start shaking the jar rhythmically making sure the cream hits the top (lid) and bottom of the jar alternately with each shake. Shaking does not have to be done fast but hitting the top and bottom of the jar causes the fat globules in the cream to turn into butter.
This takes about 15 minutes. while everyone was shaking and waiting for their cream to turn into butter we would take turns talking about Thanksgiving traditions.
After about 15 minutes a yellowish thump of butter should start to form and the leftover whey can be poured off. Sometimes I save it and use it in baking (such as cakes).
In kindergarten we made corn muffins (I just used the Jiffy brand corn muffin mix. I added a couple teaspoons of sugar since they were not served with honey or jam.) in a mini muffin pan. My mother added a little salt and yellow food coloring to our butter but in kindergarten we ate it without. It tasted a little like whipped cream on a cupcake.
Students were excited to make butter just like the pilgrims did and it might give your children something to do while they are waiting on the turkey.