Dr. Seuss Week - The Butter Battle Book

Read Across America week is one of my absolute favorite weeks of the year.  Each year we take a few of Dr. Seuss' books and do different literature (and science integrated) activities with them.  I teach third grade, so I really try to use the books that my kids might not already know.  I also try to do activities with them that are fun, but also allow me to maintain my instructional time.  As a teacher with an EOG at the end of the year, time is precious!!

We began our first big Dr. Seuss activity by reading The Butter Battle Book.  I did it as a read aloud to allow my struggling readers the same opportunity for comprehension as my higher readers.

After reading the book, we did a little hands on activity to go with our book.  We made BUTTER!!!  For third graders this is a huge deal!  They still think that milk comes from cartons and eggs come from Walmart.  The whole understanding that butter can be made in front of their very eyes is absolutely astounding to them. 

To make butter in your class, you need the following items: 

Okay. . . so the main ingredient is heavy whipping cream.  Any container will work.  I chose this one because it has a screw on lid (less mess) and because it was cheap ($3 at Ingles).  The bread is optional, but seriously. ..  so yummy with butter :)

I put the whipping cream in the container, screwed the lid on tight, and set the kids to work. 

Shake Shake Shake!!!

If you can see in the picture, I set this up as one of my reading rotations, so students just visited it on their own.  When it was open, they could go over.  They had a timer set to 2 minutes.  They pushed start, shook the jar until time was up, and turned off the timer.  It worked great, and with a class full of kids was much more efficient than having them all sit and pass it around.  After the butter is all shook up, it will start to pull away from the sides of the jar.  

The butter will not look like your typical stick butter.  This is the real deal.  It is much softer and creamier (and yummier).  The liquidy part is actually buttermilk.  I pour it off first and let my kids taste it too.  Once they have tasted their buttermilk, we put butter on bread and chow down!  We discussed whether they were like the Yooks or the Zooks in the Dr. Seuss book and ate our bread with the butter side up or the butter side down.  Some of my anti-conflict babies decided to solve the problem and fold their bread before they ate it. 

This was a great way to bring in some real world examples to their Dr. Seuss story.  It also met my science standard for states of matter.  They could witness the change as it happened.  

Is there something special you do in your class to celebrate Dr. Seuss?