The Catsup Museum’s virtual walk around makes learning fruitful and banana-mazing.
For the past few months, families have had the opportunity to stay safe at home together. Even now, with the easing of the quarantine, parents and kids are finding ways to bond and learn indoors. Parents in particular are being more creative with solutions to keep their children entertained while fostering development at the same time. With the vast range of resources accessible online, striking a balance between educational and fun can prove to be somewhat difficult.
Part of The Catsup Museum’s mission is to make learning enjoyable. Founded by NutriAsia in partnership with The Mind Museum in 2017, the establishment opened its doors to immortalize the story of the well-loved Filipino banana catsup. Through rich visuals and impressive displays, visitors get a deeper understanding of the brand’s history and how catsup is made. The gallery was set up to promote the Filipino virtues of ingenuity, resourcefulness, and hard work, which all go into each bottle of banana catsup.
This month, the museum goes online, via a virtual tour and an interactive module aimed to provide useful and amusing resources for kids of all ages. The digital walk around takes viewers to the interactive exhibits of the museum while giving in-depth commentary and mini quizzes per area. To make the tour more immersive, it also offers 360o viewing, for visitors to look around the place. By the way, a trusty banana also acts as the guide.
The tour begins at the Hall of the Natural History of Banana, where one learns more about the condiment’s main ingredient, from where it is first planted, its life stages, and the nutrients it gives. After which, audiences are led to the Maria Ylagan Orosa Hall, named after the Filipina food technologist, chemist, humanitarian, and war heroine who invented the banana catsup. Participants are then taken behind the scenes into how each bottle of catsup is produced in the Manufacturing Hall, a replica of manufacturing factories. The walk around ends in the Banquet Hall, which features larger-than-life food displays representing dishes banana catsup can be enjoyed with.
For kids who love videos and games, there is an interactive module titled Banana 101, which focuses on the wonder fruit. Children can enjoy a series of entertaining activities that will teach them everything about the potassium stick, from its history and life cycle to how they are grown and processed into the food we eat.
These digital resources are all part of the learning platform Homeschool: Masarap Matuto, Masaya Mag-Aral, by NutriAsia. To learn more about museum and to access its learning resources, visit nutriasia.com/catsup-museum/.