The children had a short lesson on hand washing and kitchen safety and learned the difference between jams and jelly. Then we divided them up into 3 groups to start off with. We had three stations set up in the beginning: blackberry jam, grape jelly, and strawberry freezer jam. The children had an opportunity to go to two of these stations. Each station took about an hour to wash jars, make the jellly/jam and clean up. My boys were all in a group together and got to make blackberry jam and strawberry freezer jelly. They did not get to make the grape jelly because we ran out of glass jars. Chelsea's group did blackberry and grape. We had frozen blueberries, sugar, and plastic jars. So we split all of the children into 2 groups and made a batch of blueberry freezer jam. We also got to see a demonstration of peach jam being made in an automatic jelly/jam maker. I don't know that the $100 price tag would be worth it to me to avoid stirring, but the jam turned out really yummy! The children had an opportunity to sample their jellies on crackers. We left one jar of jam per child to be entered in the county fair and brought the rest home. We ended up with 14 jars to bring home: 4 strawberry, 4 blueberry, 1 grape, 4 blackberry, and 1 peach. Usually there is a small charge per child (around $3) but the items for this workshop were purchased with a grant so there was no cost! The children had a great time making their jams and jelly. I am sure in this house they won't last very long!
Anthony, Lillian, and Emelia did a great job staying busy! For the first two hours they played, sang VBS songs, and colored. The third hour I broke out the iPad and let them watch Cinderella.
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