Fundación Asturies XXI brings cider culture into schools through apple pressing, visits, games and activities exploring family memories. Apples provide a practical starting point for learning together.
LA SIDRA.— Washing apples, crushing them in a duernu and watching the press at work introduces children to a process shaped by nature, tools and cooperation. The October magazine devotes three pages to the return of Sidrocoles, supported by the Asturian department responsible for culture, language policy and sport.
Bringing the cider mill into school
The team brings wooden mallets and a trough, a hand-cranked apple crusher and a portable press. Pupils take turns and follow the fruit through to freshly pressed, unfermented apple juice, known as sidre’l duernu. School pouring workshops use water.
The Sidrocoles website explains the activities and allows schools to request a programme suited to their pupils, group and season. Space, water access and an alternative for wet weather are agreed with the school. Bookings require confirmation.
Learning words through practical tasks
Pumar, mayar, magaya and pebida become easier to understand when connected to an object or action. Asturian accompanies the explanations, while pupils are encouraged to collect the words used in their own families.
Passing on knowledge is also a theme of the LA SIDRA 270 editorial. It continues in other settings, including Tierra Astur’s professional cider-pouring training, with different content and aims for each age and stage.
Family memories return to the classroom
The worksheet “La memoria de la sidre”, available without registration, invites pupils to interview someone from their family, neighbourhood or village. Questions explore how apples were crushed, who took part and the role of women, whose contribution is also recognised through individual stories from homemade cider.
Visits to cider mills and orchards extend the programme: blossom and observation in spring, apple gathering in autumn and opportunities to prepare a seedbed. What visitors can see at a mill depends on its work that day. The full feature appears in LA SIDRA’s October issue.
Archive photograph of a school apple-pressing activity. LA SIDRA 270, page 53.
