Making a 'Big Give' for Eureka!

As a charity, fundraising at Eureka! is always busy, as we develop and fund new outreach programmes for schools and the local community or raise money to improve the museum itself. But 2010 has been a particularly interesting and varied year, not least of which because we’ve been working to raise 2.9 million pounds!

The majority of our efforts this year have been spent fundraising for the new flagship gallery, Me and My World.  Me and My World will be the reinvention of the existing Me and My Body Gallery, one of our most famous and beloved galleries.  With the financial climate as it is currently it has been really difficult at times to make any headway, but now we are in a really good position, having raised £1.7m towards our final target of £2.9m. With the gallery set to be launched in 2012, we still have a long way to go, but the progress has been good.

Artist's conception of exhibits in Me and My World

Our most recent adventure in fundraising for Me and My World is something totally new for Eureka!.  We have been selected to take part in the Big Give Christmas Challenge.  This is an online fundraising idea that aims to get our visitors and supporters donating online.  All donations made between 6th December and 10th December will then be doubled.  This felt incredibly daunting at first as we have not tried to fundraise in this way before and we were unsure how it would be received, so we have been working hard to make sure that we get it right.

First of all we had to secure a £5,000 pledge to act as some of the match funding.  Eureka! is in the fortunate position that our Chair of Trustees wanted to make this pledge which made things much easier for us.  We could then set about talking to other trustees and ex-trustees to seek their support during the fundraising week in December.  This exercise was also successful and we have secured pledges to donate on the 6th December totalling £5,500! 

Our next step will be to send out e-mails to all our visitors and business contacts to seek their support.  It’s hard to gauge how much people will want to support our campaign, but we won’t know until we try.  With Eureka!’s success as a visitor attraction many people will not recognise our role as an educational charity which makes it even harder to ask for support in reaching our £20,000 target.

We hope that everyone who has visited Eureka! (including me back in 1992 when I was ten with my brother Dan and my Auntie Carol) and had an amazing experience talking to Scoot, learning about Archimedes and most importantly playing in Marks and Spencer’s will see the value in making sure the museum is renewed and refreshed for the next generation of children.

The Big Give will be taking place from 10am on December 6th 2010 and donations will be doubled up until December 10th.  You can donate by visiting the Eureka! Big Give website or learn more about what we have been up to on our website or by contacting the Fundraising Team.

Kate Goldring is the Fundraising Manager for Eureka! The National Children's Museum

Searching for a story (Part II)

This is the second in our three-part storybook trail around the Eureka! galleries. Part I is available here.

When Puffin Books released its handbook of the 70 best books for children, to celebrate their 70th anniversary of publishing children’s books this year, we were all excited in the Play and Learning department to see if our favourites had made it in. While I was looking through the list for The Tiger Who Came for Tea by Judith Kerr, I couldn’t believe how many different places at Eureka! reflected the different books.

With that in mind I’ve come up with a small trail that you can use to continue your learning after a visit to Eureka!—or use to get ready for a trip through the galleries!

This week we’re following the trail through Our Global Garden and SoundGarden. We'll start in Our Global Garden where there are two whole floors to explore!

Polar Bear, Polar Bear, What Do You Hear? is by Bill Martin Jr. and illustrated by Eric Carl, a famous children’s author in his own right. Martin and Carl’s polar bear hears all sorts of sounds during his day. Our polar bear is named Nanuq. Can you find him?

Lauren Child’s Charlie and Lola series makes another appearance with Look After Your Planet. The book is all about recycling, one of the simplest ways that we can all make a difference in taking care of our world. Wander through the gallery, can you find a recycling centre?

SoundGarden is one of our special galleries for under-fives where they can discover and learn at their own pace in a vivid and warm environment.

The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carl is a classic book that introduces younger children to the world of reading in much the same way through its gentle and vibrant illustrations. In SoundGarden it’s easy to experience life from a caterpillar’s point of view. Look around and find the butterflies, there's even one you can paint! If you were a very hungry caterpillar, what kind of butterfly would you be when you grew up?

Next time I’ll finish the trail with Living and Working Together, but don't forget you can still read Part I!

To find out more (and download the list so you can read all of these books for yourself), visit Happy Birthday Puffin!.

Jenny Goodall is the Bookings Administrator at Eureka!

Searching for a story (Part I)

When Puffin Books released its handbook containing the 70 best books for children, to celebrate their 70th anniversary of publishing children’s books this year, we were all excited in the Play and Learning department to see if our favourites had made it in. While I was looking through the list for The Tiger Who Came for Tea by Judith Kerr, I couldn’t believe how many different places at Eureka! reflected the different books.

With that in mind I’ve come up with a small trail that you can use to continue your learning after a visit to Eureka!—or use to get ready for a trip through the galleries!

I’ll start with Me & My Body:

Janet and Allan Ahlberg wrote Funny Bones to introduce you to your skeleton. Why not see it up close and personal?

The Charlie and Lola series book, My Wobbly Tooth Must Not Ever Never Fall Out by Lauren Child is all about baby teeth and the tooth fairy. If you want to play with a wobbly tooth (guaranteed to wobble and wobble and not ever never fall out), the Eureka! mouth is a good choice if your grown-up teeth haven’t come yet.

In Part II we’ll be looking at Our Global Garden and SoundGarden, and in Part III we’ll finish with Living and Working Together!

To find out more (and download the list so you can read all of these books for yourself), visit Happy Birthday Puffin.

Jenny Goodall is the Bookings Administrator at Eureka!

This is the way we brush our teeth

How do you take care of your mouth? It might be avoiding eating lots of sugary foods and drinks, flossing every day, visiting the dentist, or brushing your teeth after meals. Most of us use a toothbrush to take care of our mouths. In other cultures throughout history they have used cleaning twigs made from plants like neem or cinnamon or even porcupine quills. Some cultures use chalk or bicarbonate of soda to make their mouths clean and their smiles bright.

And how do we take care of Eureka!’s very big Mouth in Me and My Body?

We use paint of course.*

Just another day at the museum.

*We would not otherwise recommend the use of paint to achieve a healthy smile, but it’s very hard to source a large enough tube of toothpaste for a six-foot-tall mouth.

Allison Tara Sundaram is the Marketing and PR Officer at Eureka!

Play is good for babies

This week we learnt of the importance of play for babies. Sue Palmer explained in the Guardian that children need to play and to interact with other people in their early years and called for a campaign to raise awareness of these needs.

Of course children under five learn through play - it's their way of exploring the world around them. Here at Eureka! we encourage children to play right from birth and we offer many different experiences and learning opportunities that are linked to the early learning goals of the Early Years Foundation Stage.

Our two galleries dedicated for the under fives offer all sorts of challenging opportunities for supported and spontaneous play. And both SoundGarden and Desert Discovery give parents lots of opportunties to engage with their children and help them progress in their learning.

The multi-sensory nature of both galleries make them accessible for children at all levels. Whether by watching in shy awe, listening with great interest, taking small risks, playing alone or playing together, they let children explore at their own pace, helping them to become competent learners, skilful communicators and overall healthy, happy kids.

Play and the museum

The one indisputable fact about play is that it transcends time, geography and culture – children everywhere play and have played since the beginning of time. Children literally can’t stop themselves from playing because it’s as natural as eating and sleeping, and equally essential to healthy growth and development. But unlike eating and sleeping, play is the one thing that children like to do without encouragement from adults. In fact, research shows that children play even when it’s actively discouraged by adults.

But when it comes to museums, play is probably not the first thing that comes to mind. Although things have certainly moved on, especially with Kids in Museums, there still exist many museums where children are not very welcome, and where they are the admonishments to be quiet and not to touch anything are, unfortunately, the memories they take away with them. 

Of course children’s museums turn the world upside down in this respect and encourage lots of active, noisy engagement where playing and touching is absolutely required. More than anything else, it is the emphasis on play and the application of relevant academic theories of learning and child development (Piaget, Vygotsky, Bruner, Gardner), and methodologies of play-based learning that sets Eureka! and all children’s museums apart from other, more traditional museum approaches to children.

When children play they learn as well as have fun; they experiment, collaborate, test ideas, communicate and express their thoughts. And because they enjoy themselves, they are far more likely to remember what they’re learning. When children come to Eureka! they come to play. Their families and teachers bring them to Eureka! because they know that they will learn while they play – everyone is happy! At the end of any visit, children have had a fun day out without it feeling like “learning”. Parents and grandparents leave satisfied that they have done something “productive” for their offspring and not wasted away an afternoon in mindless activity. And teachers are confident that the curriculum links have helped them move forward to meet their targets.

Another important distinction from the traditional museum, of course, is that children’s museums do not have a collection and therefore do not attempt to exhibit or interpret objects of any description. Children’s museums were originally an offshoot from traditional museums, beginning with the Brooklyn Children’s Museum which opened in 1899. Over time, and most notably initiated by the work of Michael Spock at the Boston Children’s Museum in the 1960s, the principles of hands-on interactive exhibits and active, participative, discovery-based learning gained favour and the collection faded into the background and a new play-based approach to children’s learning evolved. This has defined children’s museums ever since and resulted in their growth as a worldwide phenomenon.

So, without the need to display and interpret, to use objects as the focal point, children's museums are free to explore childhood and to create learning opportunities for children from an unlimited range of perspectives and disciplines. We are able to put the child at the centre, giving them choice and control over their play and creativity and fostering independence, self-confidence, self-esteem.

This post is taken from a recent talk given by Eureka! CEO, Leigh-Anne Stradeski at the Rethinking Children/Childhood in the 21st Century on 4-5 February 2010 at Birkbeck University London. To hear more, listen to the talk and view presenation slides

Things you never knew about Eureka!

We're getting ready to celebrate Eureka!'s 18th birthday later this year and are planning a number of exciting events and initiatives throughout 2010, including this month, the introduction of a new style admission ticket offering unlimited family fun for 12 whole months.

So, now seems a good time to share with you some unknown facts about the museum that may surprise you.

• The word ‘Eureka!’ comes from the phrase coined by Archimedes, an ancient Greek philosopher and mathematician. He famously cried ‘Eureka!’ - meaning 'I’ve got it!' - while making an important scientific discovery as he took a bath. The moment has been re-enacted at Eureka! every half hour since the museum opened, meaning that  Archimedes has now taken a staggering 95,058 baths!
• Since the museum opened in 1992, Eureka!’s dedicated staff have thrown over 2,000 birthday parties and delivered over 32,000 workshops to school groups.
• Eureka!’s largest exhibit is…Eureka! itself! The inside of the building and all its working parts were left visible when it was first built, so that children can see exactly how modern buildings are put together.
• Celebrities who’ve been spotted at Eureka! include Peter Kay, Jane Horrocks, Matthew Kelly, Lenny Henry, 80s Pop Legend Chesney Hawkes, former Prime Minister John Major and a host of soap stars including Emmerdale’s Zoe Tate and Mandy Dingle, and Coronation Street’s Martin Platt.
• The path to Eureka! is a yellow brick road made up of hundreds of individual yellow bricks, many donated by local construction community Marshalls and the remainder sponsored by individuals and businesses in the local community.
• The most photographed exhibit in Eureka! is the giant mouth in the Me & My Body gallery. A whole group of children can pose on its tongue at one time!
• In January 1995, 36 children from Burtonwood County Primary School spent the night in the museum with their teacher and Eureka! staff after becoming snowed in during a class trip.
• Eureka!’s Our Global Garden gallery introduced the world to the character Gordon the Garden Gnome, voiced by Alan Titchmarsh - who later found fame on CBeebies.
• Eureka! sits on its very own ‘Discovery Road’, a name chosen by Eureka! staff to reflect the exciting experiences which lay at the end of it.
• One of Eureka!’s exhibits, a digital world population counter, now stands at an estimated 7.08 BILLION people - meaning more than 25 million people have been born since the museum opened in 1992.

And on a more serious note…….

• Eureka! is an educational charity so all our work is about making a positive contribution to children’s lives.
• A 10-member Children’s Advisory Board, ‘Ideas United’ has input into all new galleries and programmes developed by Eureka!. This approach of consulting children who are seen as the ‘real experts’ has generated national interest and has been adopted by many other organisations around the world.
• Over 100,000 children from disadvantaged communities have been able to experience Eureka! at no cost to themselves or their schools, through funding and initiatives set up by the charity.
• All children in care visit Eureka! for free and all Calderdale schools visit Eureka! at half price.