Ice Cream!

We have been working on a very fun badge this month! ICE CREAM! I don't know anyone who would turn down ice cream especially at the rate that our children have been consuming it this month.

Before beginning our adventure into learning about ice cream I had no idea that there was so much controversy surrounding the origin of the sweet treat. We quickly learned that no one really knows who created the dessert item. Honestly it is kinda nice to know that there are still some mysteries in the world.....even if they do center around milk and sugar.

Since we could not begin at the beginning we  chose to start our lessons in the 1800's. I may have chosen this time period since we are currently studying the early 1800's in our history lessons....don't tell the kids that I snuck education into their ice cream explorations!

We began the process of learning about ice cream at a local historic village. We are so blessed to live within a short drive of an actual 1800's village!  The creators of the village moved original buildings from all over New Jersey into one central location and decorated them in period furniture. They also have volunteers in each building to teach the visitors about life in the 1800's. We really enjoyed meeting the lovely ladies at the Ice Cream Parlor and hearing about how ice cream was made and transported before our modern conveniences.

After learning how homemade ice cream was made we had to give it a try ourselves! I am glad we have such a great group of families at our meetings all of whom had a lot of fun shaking bags of ice and cream to make our very own vanilla ice cream.

 

After learning about the history of ice cream and how homemade ice cream was made we moved on to how modern ice cream is produced. We were able to make a trip to Pennsylvania to the Turkey Hill Experience. At the Turkey Hill location we were able to work our way through an interactive museum and learn all of the steps of producing ice cream. From milking the cows to making commercials to sell your creation we had a blast learning how modern ice cream is produced!

Of course the fact that Turkey Hill offers as much ice cream as you can eat did not hurt the process at all!

I think I will take this container of ice cream home with me!

It has been a really fun month learning about ice cream. With the heat index in the 100's I could not think of a better time to consume massive amounts of the creamy treat!