The kit — called Can it ice cream — prompts children in years one to six to decide which breakfast ingredient would make the best ice cream. The contents include rolled oats, fruit, honey, baked beans and Marmite.
The children first put the base ice cream ingredients – including cream and milk – into a bag and mix them by dancing to Taylor Swift’s song Shake it off. They then decide which flavour to add to their ice cream.
After naming their finished product they taste-test each other’s ice cream and give feedback.
The project is multi-media including videos and a podcast. One video has an ice cream expert talking about the craft of making ice cream.
Can it ice cream is part of DairyNZ’s school education scheme and is among its most popular learning modules. It was offered to the first 350 teachers who signed up through the School Kit database and all kits were snapped up in 19 minutes.
Other schools can find out how to run the project; they just have to provide their own ingredients.
DairyNZ chief executive Tim Mackle says Can it ice cream is an engaging and fun lesson investigating an element’s change in state (compulsory in the New Zealand curriculum) -- in this case from cream to ice cream: liquid to solid.
“We want children to learn how ice cream is made including where cream and milk come from,” said Mackle. “And to get children thinking innovatively and planning, trialling and evaluating.”
The children also learn what makes different types of mixtures different – suspensions, colloids and solutions. (Colloids are a fine substance scattered throughout another substance, e.g. marshmallow or gelatine).
