Making Ice Cream, AGAIN!

Saturday we made coffee ice cream.  First you mix things in a bowl....

The ice cream ball that Santa brought "Tesla" this year has been a hit.  With more time on our hands there's been a rash of "I Scream, You Scream, We All Scream for Ice Cream!" around here.

I suggest this as one of those rare activities that can engage children of various ages (here you see some of our kids, from age 17 to 2.5), that can be creative (recipe-wise), involves gross motor (you have to keep this thing moving constantly and it's a workout!), and has a BIG payoff (REALLY good homemade ice cream!).

Saturday we made coffee flavored ice cream, and Sunday it was toffee.  The ball came with a simple recipe book and Santa threw in a Ben and Jerry's book, too.

You need ice cubes and salt to make things SUPER COLD!

This salt was easily found at our neighborhood grocery store.

Once the ice cream mixture was added to the ball we spent 15 minutes on the ellipse, taking turns shaking the ball and rolling it to the next person.  After this you stop to stir things and repeat this process.  To keep our spirits up we started a storytelling game of saying one sentence to start things off (while shaking the ball) and then passing the story and ball on to the next guy.

The ball is actually pretty heavy when full, so I gave Alleluia a little help (especially since she didn't want to give up the balloon string she was holding in one hand!  LOL!)

I'm glad Tesla was around, because the seal on the ball is really tight and hard to  open.

YUM!

Totally worth the effort!

The next day it was toffee!

"Chop" bashed up the Heath bar to make the pieces smaller.

"Peel" kept wanting to smell the mixture........

"Tesla" was tempted to eat it all right out of the ball.

The big ball is plenty for all 8 of us to have some (it's really rich).

The whole process takes about an hour, but kept "Alleluia" captivated the entire time.

Just one final note:  making homemade butter is a common Montessori classroom activity.  If you are making ice cream one day you might consider doing butter the next, or vice versa.