Craft Kitchen County Fair Week Day One

This week is all about the County Fair. Out of the three weeks we are having the class this week has the most cooking in it, which I certainly enjoy. We are starting out each day teaching about watercolors. We first go over the different techniques, and the children each did sample pages of those. The techniques are wet on wet, wet on dry, dry brush, and then we did a wash though a wash is very similar to wet on wet. Today I gave the kids a watermelon to paint a still life of, and below are some examples from the watercolor session.

For our cooking project we made farmer cheese. We discussed the different kinds of cheese, how there are soft and hard cheeses, and what their favorite kind was. We broke up the very simple ingredients so that each child could partake in adding something. The ingredients for Farmer cheese is super simple: whole milk, lemon or white vinegar, and salt (optional). This is cooked on the stovetop. All of the kids poured the milk in, and we brought it up to almost a boil at 175 degrees. Once at that temperature you take it off the heat, and then add the lemon juice or white vinegar. Stir for 10-15 seconds, and you begin to see the cheese begin to separate from the whey. We let it stand for 10 minutes while the cheese and whey separated. You then pour it through a sieve lined with cheese cloth inside a bowl to catch all of the liquid whey. You can keep the whey and use it in cooking if wanted. Now that all of the cheese is in the cheese cloth we let it strain, and you can wrap up the cheese and slightly twist some of the whey out. The picture below is of the cheese resting in the sieve. We added the salt after we did some straining. It turned out to be a very mild cheese. Served on a salty cracker or chip was delicious.

Our final project for the day was the county fair shadowboxes. I really enjoyed creating mine, but it was super fun watching the children create theirs. We had three different themes to choose from carnival, garden/animal, and sewing/baking. Using those three themes the children then collected little odds and ends that went with that theme and glued the stuff in. We did talk to them about background and foreground, and encouraged them to not just glue everything onto the back. They turned out really cute.

In between projects and play we started reading the book "Babe The Gallant Pig". It is the book that they made a movie about quite a few years ago. I'm hoping we can get through the whole thing, but I might have to summarize and skip a few chapters to get to the end in a couple days. I thought it would be a nice compliment to our whole County Fair theme.