How To Make Butter At Home

This is one of the first projects we did as unschoolers. And we had a BLAST!!!! Robyn could not stop bragging about HER butter!!

I'm not going to lie to you. Making butter does involve a certain amount of physical effort (unless you use a blender) but the whole process is pretty straightforward. In fact, because making butter is so simple, it makes a great project for kids or adults. It's a fast and easy process that lets you see for yourself where this basic and familiar food comes from.

The Basic Process

To make butter, first start with a simple ingredient, heavy cream. You can buy whipping cream at the grocery store, although if you live in a part of the country where you can get fresh cream from a dairy, so much the better.

Next, stir up the cream so that the butterfat globules begin to separate from the liquid. One of the simplest ways to do this is to get a canning jar with a sturdy lid and fill it about one-third full of cream. Then simply shake the jar until you feel and see the butter separate. When that happens, there's a sudden and noticeable difference in the consistency. That's the time to stop shaking. What they Don't tell you, is that you're going to shake your arms off to get to that point. :) We passed our jar back and forth, so we could rest our arms!

Now separate the butter from the buttermilk by straining it. A colander or piece of cheesecloth may be helpful for this task. Personally, we just used the colander. Rinse the butter with cold water, VERY gently turning the butter with a spoon while the cold water runs over it until the water runs clear. It's really really soft, so be careful. Then mix in a little bit of salt, to taste or leave the butter unsalted if you prefer. Put the butter in the refrigerator. (We put ours into a coffee cup). Let it chill, and then it's ready to eat!

Of course, you could forgo the canning jar and make butter in an old-fashioned butter churn, or in a mixer. Whichever tool you choose, the basic process is the same. The main difference is the amount of effort it takes to whip the cream into butter.

Also what they don't tell you, is that the buttermilk that is leftover from making the butter. Refrigerate it overnight, (as you're doing with the butter anyway so it can get hard), and use that buttermilk to make biscuits. Robyn helped make the biscuits, and she was VERY proud of 'her' biscuits and 'her' butter!! Now we need to make jelly! :)

What is Unschooling??? (for anyone who doesn't know)

Unschooling :) Current mood: strong Category: Life What Is Unschooling? This is also known as interest driven, child-led, natural, organic, eclectic, or self-directed learning. Lately, the term "unschooling" has come to be associated with the type of homeschooling that doesn't use a "fixed" curriculum. I define unschooling as allowing my child as much freedom to learn in the world, as I can comfortably bear. The advantage of this method is that it doesn't require me to become someone else, i.e. a professional teacher pouring knowledge into child-vessels on a planned basis. Instead we live and learn together, pursuing questions and interests as they arise, and using conventional schooling on an "on demand" basis. This is the way we learn as pre-schoolers, and the way we learn when we leave school and enter the world of work. So, for instance, a young child's interest in hot rods can lead him to a study of how the engine works (science), how and when the car was built (history and business), who built and designed the car (biography), etc. Certainly these interests can lead to reading texts, taking courses, or doing projects, but the important difference is that these activities were chosen and engaged in freely by the learner. They were not dictated to the learner through curricular mandate to be done at a specific time and place, though parents with a more hands-on approach to unschooling certainly can influence and guide their children's choices. Unschooling, for lack of a better term (until people start to accept living as part and parcel of learning), is the natural way to learn. However, this does not mean unschoolers do not take traditional classes or use curricular materials when the student, or parents and children together, decide that this is how they want to do it. Learning to read or do quadratic equations are not "natural" processes, but unschoolers nonetheless learn them when it makes sense to them to do so, not because they have reached a certain age or are compelled to do so by arbitrary authority. Therefore it isn't unusual to find unschoolers who are barely eight-years-old studying astronomy or who are ten-years-old and just learning to read. I hope this explains. :)

You Might Be An Unschooler If.......

Friday, December 12, 2008

You Might Be An Unschooler If....... Current mood: amused Category: Life If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need. ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero .. --> end quote table --> You Might Be An Unschooler If ... Karen M. Gibson ... conversations held in the car include such topics as square roots, time and space travel, Native Americans and their participation in the American Revolution, the Roman Empire, mortgages, how retail businesses figure their profit, the latest scenario to a favorite computer game, constellations, basketball history and NASCAR racing. ... your child's science curriculum includes Scientific American and Sky & Telescope magazines, a membership in the local Astronomical Society, email penpal professors from a nearby University, books from the library, and science experiments at home, but doesn't include any textbooks. (I wonder if annual passes to the Alligator Farm and the Museum of Science & History qualify) ... your teenager's music selections for the past month include Enya, Tony Bennett, Frank Sinatra, James Taylor, Alanis Morisette, The Dixie Chicks, Garth Brooks, Matchbox 20, with a little jazz and classical thrown in the mix! ... your homeschooling friends simply don't understand how you can possibly teach your children without any textbooks or even a scope and sequence. ... your 8-year-old cant read yet, (my 8 yr old can) but he can show you the geographic location of all the NBA teams in North America. ... your extended family assumes that your homeschooling includes all the same subjects as the public schools teach and that you stick to a traditional curriculum, and you don't tell them any differently. ... your child's favorite television station is PBS. ... your child reads Foreign Affairs and Popular Science instead of People and Teen magazines. ... you don't tell your homeschooling friends that you don't "teach" your child because you are sure they wouldn't understand and that you would be thought of as 'weird' and 'strange'. ... your child doesn't understand the concept of homework. ... you don't worry about what grade level your child should be or what a scope and sequence says he should be learning at that grade level. ... you trust your child to learn what he wants/needs to learn on his/her own timetable. These are examples from our own unschooling experience. Yours are guaranteed to be different. Copyright February 1999

Unschooling, Undefined......

Tuesday, November 25, 2008

Unschooling Undefined Category: Life Below is an article written by Eric Anderson that is posted on "Jon's Homeschool Resources" website. It is one of the best definitions of unschooling I've found. (Specifically the last paragraph.) http://www.midnightbeach.com/hs/UnschoolingUndefined.html Unschooling Undefined by Eric Anderson Unschooling is a word coined by negating the idea of schooling; it starts off with a negative definition. What, specifically, is it about schools that unschoolers want to do without? The School Organization · Breaking up the day into learning time and play time. · Starting and stopping learning (or shifting topics) according to an externally-imposed schedule. · Telling students what they should care about. · Telling students when they should care about it. · Telling students what is good enough. · The complex hierarchy with the student at the bottom. The De-humanizing Aspects of Schools · Having to ask permission for basic human needs. · Having to supply "acceptable" excuses for absence or lateness. · Routine abridgment of human (constitutional) rights. · Standing in lines, waiting for everything: food, water, attention of the teacher, time on the computer, etc. · Group rewards and punishments. · Neglect of individual gifts and problems. · Moving at the sound of a bell. · Students coming to view themselves as products, moving down a 12-year assembly line, with bits of knowledge poured in or bolted on by others as the belt moves along. Seeing the primary responsibility for their education as being in the hands of others. Isolation from the Real World · Segregation by chronological age. · Separation from family. · Isolation from the working world. · Isolation from the effects of age and disease. · "Free" education isolates children from economic reality. · Subject matter is divorced from context. Schedule Rigidity · Having to be in school at certain times means you can't see the World Cup or a solar eclipse if it happens during the school day, and you can't see the late show or a lunar eclipse if you have to get up in the morning. · Having to be in school limits your ability to travel. · Having to be in school limits your ability to do any time-consuming worthwhile activity. Note that these issues do not address the questions of "problem schools." They are unrelated to questions of crime, drugs, threat of violence, time spent in forced commuting, illiterate teachers, etc. The problems unschoolers specifically care about exist (to a greater or lesser extent) even in "good" schools. Moreover, many educational reform proposals act to make these problems worse. Improved security measures increase the dehumanizing aspects of school "discipline". "Back-to-basics" programs increase the rigidity of the curriculum, and often further divorce it from context. "Mainstreaming" programs exacerbate the effects of a one-size-fits-all curriculum, and often take up huge fractions of teachers' time and energy. Many reformers want to increase the number of hours in a schoolday or schooldays in a year, eliminating the chance for a student to educate himself in the off hours. The solution to the problems inherent in mass-produced education is not more of the same. Unfortunately, telling what unschooling isn't doesn't tell what it is. In some ways, all homeschooling is unschooling -- we don't isolate our kids from life, or move at the sound of a bell, or require permission slips, or neglect the individuality of our children. Where unschoolers differ from other homeschoolers is the extent to which we let children be responsible for their own education. Unschoolers believe that the natural curiosity of a healthy child, given access to a rich environment, will lead the child to learn what he or she needs to know. When learning comes about as a result of the child's desires, it is absorbed easily, enthusiastically, openly. The child works harder because he is doing what he thinks is important, rather than what someone else has told him is important. New knowledge starts with a context because it fits in with things the child already cares about. Learning driven by real desire is so much more efficient than passive absorption that unschoolers can tolerate much more exploration, dabbling, dawdling and play than can curriculum- inflictors. The unschooling literature abounds with stories of children who paid no attention to math or reading for their first ten years and then caught up in just a few weeks. When learning is imposed from without, there are many deleterious effects. The child may not be ready for the material or may be beyond it; the child may resist it, either because he has something better to do or just out of general orneriness. When you force a topic, you short-circuit precisely the volitional parts of the mind that are critical to real learning. You may produce memorization, but cannot effect understanding. You risk the child developing a dislike for the topic, for the teacher, and even for learning itself. Child-driven learning is fundamentally active. Children are doing things because they have taken responsibility for carrying out the actions needed to fulfill their desires. Unschooling is centered around the idea of learning, with the student as the center of action and the source of activity, rather than on the idea of teaching (with the teacher as the center of action and the source of activity). Not only does this make the learning more effective, but it encourages the child to develop virtues: independence, self-reliance, and a sense of responsibility. The child learns that if he wants something to happen, he has to make it happen. As Jim Muncy pointed out in his "spectrum of unschooling" post [home-ed mailing list, summer of '94], homeschoolers unschool to varying degrees. Unschooling families do not set up miniature classrooms, with time set aside for studying, a parent playing the role of teacher, formal lesson plans and imposed curricula. Beyond that limit, we differ in how much order we try to lend to the learning process. "Radical" unschoolers impose little or no structure, though books and such are available to act as guides. Others allow children to learn what they wish, but provide strong organizational assistance to help the children reach their goals. (Assistance can take the form of lessons, or workbooks, or even assigned projects.) Some families use curricula for some subjects (often math) but are freer with others. Most try to squeeze learning out of the activities of everyday life. The common bond is acknowledging that the enthusiastic participation of the child is the most important single factor in the child's education.

Introducing us "weirdos" :)

I have 2 children. Amy is 15, and is in public school. Robyn was in public school.... in "special ed" classes. They call them "ESE" class now... also known as "box classes". Samey same.

My Robyn is not like most kids. A series of doctors and specialists in the beginning of her life... a brain that didn't develop enough myelin.. visual impairment.... long story short.. Robyn is literally 1 in 20,000. If you were selling me a raffle ticket, and told me that was my odds of winning.... then I wouldn't bother. But, I DID win. I won her.

What I find sad about public schools, is that they treat the children like cattle. They spend far too much time standing in line for basic human needs... water.... food... attention... and the right to use the toilet. There are group punishments, and group rewards. All children are taught the same thing, at the same time. What about the child who is TRULY INTERESTED in that subject? Once that lesson is over, that's it. If that child wants to learn more, they're on their own. What if the child has trouble with that subject? Well, it's all rather, "sink or swim", is it not?

After going through sheer hell with the public school system, I removed her. She is far too smart for those "box" classes.... and through no fault of her own, she learns more slowly. She needed the time, the attention, and the one on one that the public school could not provide.
Time for this Momma to take things into her own hands.

In September of 2008, I took my little girl OUT of public school. We've been "unschooling" for 3 months. My one regret? WHY THE HECK DIDN'T I DO THIS SOONER??? I also fervently wish I'd unschooled my older child. I am resentful of the invisible ADHD sign they hung around her neck. She is bright, and artistic and imaginative. Too many teachers tried to stifle her talents, and break her down into something they could control. Hindsight is 20/20. NOT ALL CHILDREN ARE THE SAME!!!

Now it's nearly 2 am. More later. :) Happy Unschooling dreams.... and may those dreams never end!! :)