Milkshake Moustaches

We have had such a fun afternoon today making milkshakes!!

We had a question both yesterday and this morning on our board -

Yesterday the question asked 'What is your favourite flavour?' The children could choose between chocolate, vanilla or strawberry. So the groups were made - 12 chocolate, 3 vanilla and 6 strawberry.

The children were given a blender, plastic cups, ice cream and milk. In their group they had to discuss how they were going to make the milkshakes with these items. The teacher gave no instructions but was the robot that the children had to give directions to.

Vanilla went first:
They decided to each have a turn at putting a scoop of ice cream in the blender, followed by a splash of milk. Next they blended it together and had a taste test. The verdict was - lots of milkshake moustaches!

Next was strawberry:
They spent a lot of time talking about what steps they would take to make the milkshake. Using what we had learned about procedures they decided who was going to scoop the ice cream, pour the milk and operate the blender. They decided each person in the group got to add a scoop of ice cream, that meant 6 scoops!! Very clever thinking :-) Then the milk had to reach the number 40 on the blender. Turn on the blender and after the taste test the verdict was - a big thumbs up!

Finally it was chocolate:
This proved to be the most popular and since we had 12 people we had to halve the group and make two chocolate milkshakes. They each had a turn at putting a scoop of ice cream in the blender, followed by each putting in a splash of milk. All into the blender and after the taste test the verdict was - huge smiles!

First group:

Second group:

Once each group had finished we sat together on the mat and reflected on how the groups worked together. We had previously talked about what was an effective procedure and what was an ineffective procedure. 

We talked about what they thought worked well and what they would do differently next time. They all agreed that if you don't work together, listen to each other and follow the steps of a procedure correctly then things can go wrong! We had a lot of fun making them and clearly we followed the steps carefully since each group had a milkshake as an end result!