Make Your Own Butter: Messy Science

Do you like Science?  Maybe you weren’t a huge fan of Biology class, {True story: my 7th grade lab partner and I got an actual award for “Best No-Hands Frog Dissection”}, but there are a lot of really cool, fun, sometimes messy things you can do in your own home that are actually Science at work!

This week, I’m excited to be part of Summer Fun Camp again, and our theme is “Weird Science” experiments and activities!

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Little Crafter is a real scientist-in-the-making…he thinks this kind of stuff is uber-cool and loves to do “eff-peera-ments” whenever he has the chance.  I have to admit, since we play the “honestly game” around here, that I’m not usually the one who comes up with the fun Science stuff; it’s my mom.  She’s an Instructional Assistant {we like to tease her about how she’s been in the sixth grade for 20 years}, so she gets to see and do lots of cool things in the Science classes she helps out in.

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She’s gotten Little Crafter his own lab coat, goggles, and magnifying class, so he’s ready for anything!  Here’s one of the things they did recently that I thought was totally awesome {and so did he!}.

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What you need:

1 empty peanut butter jar
5 clean marbles
1/2 cup of heavy whipping cream
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What you do:
Pour cream into jar and add marbles.
Shake or roll jar for about 15 minutes.
Remove liquid and marbles.
Spoon butter into a dish or mold.
May add salt if you like.
Chill in refrigerator. Enjoy.


Fifteen minutes might sound like a long time, but if you’re playing games and rolling the jar back and forth across the floor, it goes by in no time, or so I’m told.

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Now.  Here’s the part where I have a confession to make {bad blogger}…I literally have no photos for you of the process for making this.  Grandma and LC did this together and all I got was the butter.  {Kirsten, I’m sorry.  Please don’t fire me.  I promise I’m still awesome!}

To make it up to you, I have an extra messy experiment for you…the Diet Coke Fountain!  Get a 1 or 2 liter bottle of soda, remove the cap, and quickly add 6 or 7 peppermint Mentos.  Run!  It’ll spray way up into the air and make a really cool fountain.  PS: Do this outside!!

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It’s Little Crafter tested, Little Crafter approved!  Have fun!

Hugs & Glitter,

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5 Comments

  1. I want to make my own butter! (even though I’m trying not to eat it right now!) but my kids would absolutely love the soda fountain thing! And what an adorable little scientist 🙂

  2. My daughter’s kindergarten teacher had the students do this project. She put some heavy cream and two marbles in the smallest Rubbermaid container, tightly capped. Then she gave each student one container and instructed them to start shaking them. After about 5 minutes of shaking they had butter and liquid. Teacher uncapped the containers,, poured out the liquid, and had the students spread the butter on their biscuits. They were learning the letter “B.” Butter and Biscuits. It was parents’ visiting day, and I was so impressed!

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