An innovative initiative by the Cork-based Butter Museum will bring the dairy sector and its history into two west Cork classrooms.
The ground-breaking project aims to address the growing loss of understanding and knowledge among children regarding the origins of the food and the unique cultural heritage of Ireland’s dairy sector.
“New technology has opened up immense possibilities for the projection of museum collections beyond the walls of the museum,” said project leader Dr Danielle O’Donovan.
The Butter Museum has developed a range of resources for outreach and education which combine the old and the new, she explained.
These resources include:
Schools’ activity worksheets designed by a primary school teacher.3D animations of collection items.Digital collection of butter wrappers from creameries across the country.Handling object boxes that can be brought to schools by a facilitator from the museum.The project, which is funded by the Golden Jubilee Trust, will liaise with teachers in two west Cork schools to design a range of activities that can take place in the classroom which integrate use of these educational resources.
“While these activities will be beneficial in themselves, the classroom activities could lead to outreach visits, to the Butter Museum or to local sites associated with the history of local dairying,” O’Donovan said.
“We will devise a series of videos that can be shared on the Butter Museum website that quickly explain how to deliver the new learning activities in the classroom and another series that will serve as introductions to the activities for teachers to show to students in the classroom,” she added.
It is envisaged that these videos will then become a way to extend the teaching knowledge learned from this process to other schools.
As well as bringing the Butter Museum out to the classroom, the project will also tackle the dearth of knowledge regarding the origins of everyday food, O’Donovan maintained.
“Children are becoming increasingly detached from the source of their food. A 2020 study found that one in five children in England did not know that milk and butter come from cows,” she pointed out.
A further 10% of the children thought milk and butter was produced in the supermarket, she added.
“It would be naïve to believe that we are not far behind England. And the situation will continue to deteriorate as the number of farming families decreases,” O’Donovan predicted.
An innovative initiative by the Cork-based Butter Museum will bring the dairy sector and its history into two west Cork classrooms.
The ground-breaking project aims to address the growing loss of understanding and knowledge among children regarding the origins of the food and the unique cultural heritage of Ireland’s dairy sector.
“New technology has opened up immense possibilities for the projection of museum collections beyond the walls of the museum,” said project leader Dr Danielle O’Donovan.
The Butter Museum has developed a range of resources for outreach and education which combine the old and the new, she explained.
These resources include:
Schools’ activity worksheets designed by a primary school teacher.3D animations of collection items.Digital collection of butter wrappers from creameries across the country.Handling object boxes that can be brought to schools by a facilitator from the museum.The project, which is funded by the Golden Jubilee Trust, will liaise with teachers in two west Cork schools to design a range of activities that can take place in the classroom which integrate use of these educational resources.
“While these activities will be beneficial in themselves, the classroom activities could lead to outreach visits, to the Butter Museum or to local sites associated with the history of local dairying,” O’Donovan said.
“We will devise a series of videos that can be shared on the Butter Museum website that quickly explain how to deliver the new learning activities in the classroom and another series that will serve as introductions to the activities for teachers to show to students in the classroom,” she added.
It is envisaged that these videos will then become a way to extend the teaching knowledge learned from this process to other schools.
As well as bringing the Butter Museum out to the classroom, the project will also tackle the dearth of knowledge regarding the origins of everyday food, O’Donovan maintained.
“Children are becoming increasingly detached from the source of their food. A 2020 study found that one in five children in England did not know that milk and butter come from cows,” she pointed out.
A further 10% of the children thought milk and butter was produced in the supermarket, she added.
“It would be naïve to believe that we are not far behind England. And the situation will continue to deteriorate as the number of farming families decreases,” O’Donovan predicted.
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