Making Maple Syrup

Today we visited John R. Park Homestead to learn about the process of making maple syrup. What a wonderful field trip!

First we visited the classroom to learn about the parts of the tree and how sap is made. 

The children dramatized the parts using little puppets to help them remember. 

We then went outside to check the collection buckets. Because it was a warm, sunny day the sap was running and many buckets were full!

We pretended to be children from 100 years ago and practised drilling holes in the wood and carrying the buckets of sap.

We learned that syrup boils down as 1/40 the liquid sap. We saw how pioneers boiled sap into syrup using an outdoor fire. 

We then visited the kitchen inside the homestead. We saw how impurities were removed from the syrup. 

But the best part of all was tasting the maple sugar!

A special thank you to all family members who were able to join us today.