PYP 1&2 Plantation Museum Field Trip
-A shared and scaffolded write by P1&2 class as a team
On Tuesday 16th April, PYP1&2 students went to MUSPERIN 1. This is one of the Indonesian Plantation Museums in Medan. They went from MIS with Mr Alex and Ms Maria. Ms Vika was their expert guide at the museum.
The students learned that the building is more than 100 years old and used to be the home of the plantation boss from the Netherlands! Students smelled spices and other plantation products from all across the Indonesian islands. They said that coffee beans, tea, cacao, cinnamon, cloves, vanilla, and soap nuts all smelled and looked so interesting in different ways. They saw a display showing palm oil used as an ingredient in many things such as chocolate, soap, candles, shampoo and even fuel for engines!
“We learned that Indonesia is the #1 largest palm oil producer in the whole world!” said Vito and Lucas excitedly.
In the next room students learned about tobacco plantations from long ago, and studied a mini diorama of a leaf-drying shed, as well as a life size diorama of a lady sorting the big, round, dry leaves! There was a long stem/trunk from a real rubber tree to see how the skin is cut and the fresh white latex drips out for collection, and also a video showing how rubber balls are carefully made in a special factory.
Upstairs the children saw old machines that were used for counting money, harvest sizes and sales. Drawings of plants and plantations are often used on Indonesian money and stamps because plantations are very important in Indonesia. The museum showed the 2 kinds of oil palm flowers that need to pollinate together for oil palm fruit (kelapa sawit). Usually insects mix the pollen dust between the flowers, or sometimes people can help to be the pollinator.
ShaSha and Afiq wondered “How often can palm oil fruits be harvested?” and found out that it is very often, usually 3 or more times per month!
After that they played in the 3D photo room, pretending to feed shiny red coffee cherries to an enormous palm civet (musang), sitting in a giant coffee bean scoop, and holding a wild Sumatran tiger on a rope!
Finally, the students went outside and gently planted small ginger roots in a pot to take home. Ms Vika said that if they care for the plant, then they can harvest some ginger root for cooking or medicine in 3 months time.
Myra and Alexia said “We are excited to harvest our ginger root in the summer holiday!”
Before returning to MIS, everybody climbed on the little yellow plantation engine at the front of the museum, pretending to drive the long and heavy train full of palm oil fruits!
“Zzzzzzzzz…” It was a very busy morning. Iman, Tobias and Emily had a short snooze on the bus ride back to school!
