A Trip to Horng Jou Tile Factory Museum & Yakult drinks factory
Our Unit of Inquiry was based on the theme ‘How we Organize Ourselves’ from which we had our Central Idea: “Money is a human-made system that helps to value goods & services”.
One of the most interesting Lines of Inquiry that we followed through this unit was how value is created. The students themselves had listed many different forms of value including historic value, artistic value, material value etc. For the field trip we thought how fitting it would be to visit a tile factory (responsible for the manufacture of ceramic and porcelain tiles for bathrooms, k
itchens, etc.) where value is created from mud, clay & sand and also a visit to the Yakult factory where value is created from water and bacteria!
From this trip, the 4th grade students were able to see that diligent, creative people can begin with very basic raw materials (water, germs, mud) and create something useful and desirable. They were especially impressed with the high standards of efficiency and cleanliness of the Yakult drinks factory. Meanwhile, at the Tile Factory Museum, each student was given an opportunity to create value of their own by carefully decorating a small donut-shaped ring of clay that would be sent to the kiln in a similar manner in which the Horng Jou company have been making tiles for many decades.
