Homeschool: Sugar Camp Days

Posted by My Heart Song

3/21/2011

Last weekend we headed to Sugar Camp Days, being held at a local county park. We are fortunate to live in a part of America where sugar maple trees are abundant. This county park walked us through the process, from collecting sap to boiling it into syrup.

This is a tree tap with a pail to collect the sap.

This man was explaining the boiling process. Did you know it takes 40 gallons of sap to boil down to 1 gallon of maple syrup? The sap is mostly water, so that has to be evaporated away to get the syrup.
There was much more to see than only the syrup process, including ice carvings like this moose...
and blacksmiths...and horse-drawn wagon rides. This was my 3-year-old's favorite part of the day.
And to top it off, there was a playground for the kids to enjoy before we headed home.

This was great timing, as we are in the process of reading the Little House on the Prairie series. In the first book, Little House in the Big Woods, there is a chapter on how the pioneers made maple syrup. So this field trip helped us better understand the process... and made us thankful for the syrup we can enjoy today!

Educational and fun.