They appreciated the finished product, though, and enjoyed squeezing out the buttermilk like Betsy did, although they didn’t like the taste of the buttermilk!
Since we weren’t sugaring, and it wasn’t snowing, there wasn’t an easy way to recreate Betsy’s waxing of the maple syrup in the snow. I did learn a few things about New England and maple syrup from visiting my grandmother as a kid, though, and so we churned our own vanilla ice cream. While the churn was going, we did a blind taste test of real maple syrup and a fast food restaurant’s syrup. (The real stuff was identified by nearly every child by appearance alone, and every single one choose it in the taste test.) After our ice cream was ready, we topped it with maple syrup, New England-style, and headed back to the fire for our snack.
In the book, Betsy and her friends make a new outfit for a little boy in the hopes of helping him get adopted. While we’ve taking on several simple sewing projects, I opted not to try to make pants. Instead, we knotted scarves for a scarf mission in Scituate, Massachusetts.
When each girl finished making her scarf, she decorated a simple card to go with it. They were really creative with these!
We had a great time celebrating Understood Betsy style, and we really packed a lot into the few hours that we had. This is the perfect winter book – and since it takes place about a hundred years ago, there are many skills to practice throughout the reading.
Have you read Understood Betsy?
What are your thoughts?