At the end of our week-long unit study on maple syrup, we went to Minnetrista Center for a presentation on maple syrup. After a puppet show talking about maple syrup, tapping and trees, we walked outside (brrr...) where they had a tap into a tree. The sap wasn't flowing when we were there because it was too cold, but we could see the sap that had come from the tree previously, frozen in the jug.
They used PVC pipe and an old milk jug.
Each child got to try their hand at an auger (or hand powered drill) on a tree that was close to death.
Alex drilling above and Nicolas below.
Then we went to the fire where they were boiling the sap. She explained how the Indians would heat up a rock and put it into the sap to evaporate it, because they used gourd bowls that would catch fire over an open flame.
For craft time, each child made their own tree trunk out of construction paper, poked a hole for the spile (a piece of plastic straw), and hung their bucket from the spile. The buckets were bottle caps with a wire for the handle.
They gave us a taste test to see if we could tell real maple syrup from the kind we usually buy at the stores. Most kids did pretty good at guessing correctly.
Even though the day was pretty cold and very windy, we still had a good time. The only 2 dissappointments were not seeing the sap actually flowing that day and not getting to taste the sap directly out the tree.
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