Donating Children’s Books About Manufacturing

This year, Batesville Products celebrated National Manufacturing Month with a new children’s book.

In The Hunt for Metal Treasure, three friends explore town and discover that metal castings are part of our everyday lives.

Donating Children’s Books

Thanks to support from an IN-MaC microgrant, BPI donated books to 18 local elementary schools, impacting 285 classrooms or an estimated 6,000 students!

The project had the biggest impact in Indiana’s Dearborn, Ohio, Ripley, Franklin, and Switzerland counties, but also reached beyond Indiana borders to some Ohio and Kentucky schools.

Excitement continued to spread across the nation thanks to Purdue Polytechnic IN-MaC, The Non Ferrous Foundry Society, and The American Foundry Society. The project also gained attention in industry podcasts such as Content Marketing Engineered and The Manufacturing Employer. And on top of this, dozens of manufacturing professionals shared copies of the book with their family, friends, and local school district, furthering its reach and accomplishing the main purpose of this project: To put a spotlight on the manufacturing industry and technical careers.

Visiting 9 Local Schools

While the children’s book is exciting, Batesville Products didn’t stop there. The team visited 9 local elementary schools as a guest speaker: showing what we do and how we do it, reading the children’s book, passing around examples, and doing hands-on activities that simulate the manufacturing process. Check out videos, coloring pages, and these manufacturing activities for kids at batesvilleproducts.com/kids.

The classroom visits opened the students’ eyes to how items we use in our daily lives came to be. This inspired new observations and questions from the students such as…

The teachers loved how the book and classroom visits tied into their curriculum and plan to welcome Batesville Products back next year.

National Manufacturing Month

October is National Manufacturing Month, which is all about spreading awareness and excitement for the manufacturing industry and technical careers. While October brought big strides in inspiring the next generation, Batesville Products plans to continue celebrating manufacturing all year long.