Science Podcast. St Fagans Visit.

On the 24th April myself, Beth Poulton and Chloe Arthur visited St Fagans as part of our research for our scientific podcast. Having received the guidelines for the assignment, we felt that it was important to find a topic that we were all interested in. During our visit at the outdoor museum, we all decided that the topic of food was an interesting one to pursue with. So the general theme of our assignment is the evolution of food and out of classroom activities and experiences can help aid children to develop a better understanding of the scientific concepts behind food. St Fagans is a perfect example of an out of classroom experience that caters for all learning styles which we felt was extremely beneficial. Throughout our visit we took pictures of how food has evolved from the very beginning of the history timeline implemented in St Fagans. First we visited a Corn Mill that originated from the early 18th century. Fortunately, there was a gentleman inside of the mill that gave his extremely useful and interesting facts about the mill and how it was used to produce corn which was a vital and very popular source of ingredient back then. We too many photos of inside the corn mill to enable us to provide an accurate depiction in our podcast. I particularly enjoyed the visit to the mill as it was evident that the mill was at the heart of the community and the prime resource for foods such as bread during the time it was in full use. It became clear to us that the mill and the production of corn/bread is a great opportunity for practitioners to teach the science of reversible and irreversible reactions. Inevitably making bread is a irreversible reaction and here at the corn mill is very opportune for this to be established. We then went to the Rydycar Terrace that was originally in Merthyr Tydfil. The terraced houses showed the evolution in every aspect of life. In reference to our topic, the houses showed how food was prepared and cooked changed due to evolution of technology, electricity and science itself. The houses were extremely beneficial and relevant to our topic so we made sure we had plenty of photos to capture each era. A predominant aspect of each house was the garden, as we went through the years the garden became less of an important feature of the house. But we felt that the garden could be used to teach the ideas of photosynthesis and how food is actually grown. After all there are many scientific misconceptions children hold in regards to food and how it is actually made.