Sunday, October 3, 2010

Curds and Whey

On Friday we concluded our unit on spiders. 

We learned the nursery rhyme, "Little Miss Muffet".  We talked about what a tuffet is(a stool), and what curds and whey is (cottage cheese).  We did a little experiment and tried to make our own curds and whey.  I didn't try this ahead of time so this was truly an experiment. 
We used 1% milk (it called for whole milk but 1 % was what we had) and vinegar.  It called for warm milk and vinegar.  We let the milk get to room temperature and then added our vinegar. 
We mixed it up and it started to clump a little and separate. 
The kids got to look at it and then we let it sit during work time. 
After work time, this is what it looked like.
Here are the curds.  It didn't smell the greatest (really vinegary) and I took one for the team and tried it.  I told the kids that it didn't taste very good and they told me if it had sugar it would be better.  I told them that everything tastes better with sugar. (:  Yuck, it did not taste like cottage cheese!!  It did turn out like curds and whey though.
Some of our friends finished their spiders.  I love our art lessons because we show them how to make their project and during work time they get to make it.  If they need some guidance we will help but we really try to build independence and have them make theirs the way they want. 
We had show 'n tell on Friday and one of our friends brought in 3 different size grasshoppers, 2 different kinds of ladybugs, a wooly bear caterpillar and a millipede.  We put them out along with some magnifying glasses for the kids to observe.
At the easel, we painted spiders.  All the kids did great adding 8 legs on their spider.  Here's a little girl making her spider.
Work time

Spider tweezers
Pin pushing shapes
Giant pegboard
Number matching
Small pegboard

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