The children recently visited the Great Valley Nature Center located just outside of Phoenixville. They learned how maple sap is taken from trees to make maple sugar and syrup. The discovery of the trees having sap was a wonderful legend told by Native Americans and how they first learned how to cook the sap using a hot rock for steaming off all the water within the sap. The end result was maple sugar that the children each tasted-Yummy! Then the children learned how the early pilgrims processed the sap by cooking it over an open fire on a balancing tree while still working throughout the day with their daily chores. Finally, the children also learned how we today make syrup by visiting the steam shack and they discovered that it takes 40 gallons of sap just to make 1 gallon of maple syrup and that most of our syrup today isn’t true maple sugar but actually corn syrup instead. The children were able to taste both versions to see which kind of syrup they liked best. This is a wonderful trip to go on so if you missed the chance this year maybe you can join us next year.
