Don't grow up to be an eggplant!

Imagination is a wonderful thing and children have an almost unending capacity for using theirs, especially at this time of year.  The following quote by Ursula K. Le Guin (The Language of the Night) is, thankfully, very true.

“I doubt that the imagination can be suppressed. If you truly eradicated it in a child, he would grow up to be an eggplant.”

In all my years working at Eureka! I am happy to report that I have never met a child who was destined to become an eggplant!

Some of the most heart warming and incredibly entertaining moments I have experienced at Eureka! have been when I have been sat in a darkened corridor providing ears and a voice for a talking dustbin. Talking to Scoot the Robot can be a magical experience for a child and one that they will remember forever. Sometimes it will bring them back to Eureka! again and again to renew their acquaintance with their robot friend. For the tiny tots Scoot is as real to them as Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy. As they grow and learn more about the world they begin to question and challenge Scoot.

Child: "You’re not real."

Scoot: "I am. You’re not imagining me. I’m right in front of you."

Child: "There’s somebody talking for you."

Scoot: "That’s a worrying thought. Is there somebody talking for you?"

Child: "No, I’m talking myself."

Scoot: "Can’t I talk for myself?"

Child: "No – somebody has to talk for you."

Scoot: "Golly, I’m glad they’re there to help me then; I love talking; I’m a bit of a chatterbox."

The conversation continues with the child happily chatting to a metal dustbin that they have established is not a real robot. Even the children who discover Scoot’s secret, once the problem is solved, will continue to chat to Scoot as before. Does that mean they are stupid? Certainly not; they are using their imaginations and, in the words of George Scialabba:

“Perhaps imagination is only intelligence having fun.”

There are many children who consider Scoot a friend and thoroughly enjoy telling him their latest news and discovering things about a robot’s life. Robots don’t have families; that’s why they enjoy making new friends so much. Robots are made of metal so they don’t like the rain as it can make them go rusty. Robots don’t grow so it’s very difficult to guess how old they are. (Scoot was ‘born’ on the same day as Eureka!, 9 July 1992).

I finish with a final quote from Theodore Geisel; which explains why even I believe in Scoot the Robot – and is yet another reason I love my job.

“I like nonsense; it wakes up the brain cells. Fantasy is a necessary ingredient in living; it's a way of looking at life through the wrong end of a telescope. Which is what I do, and that enables you to laugh at life's realities.”

Jill Ward is an Enabler in the Front of House team at Eureka!

Merry Christmas everyone!

Play and make good cheer

This is our last quote before Christmas so a festive saying is in order today. Thomas Tusser (1524-1580), a sixteenth century farmer and poet is known for an instructional poem entitled Five Hundred Points of Good Husbandry, published in 1557. As well as the well-known quote below, he is credited with coining the much-repeated proverb, "A fool and his money are soon parted."

"At Christmas play and make good cheer, for Christmas comes but once a year."

Have a read of this article by Idler Tom Hodgkinson whose fantasy Christmas involves lots of time for play and possibly resembles the kind of holiday that Thomas Tusser would have recognised! 

What games will you be playing with your family this holiday?

Children say the funniest things part 2

Anyone who has ever interacted with children has undoubtedly been moved to tears of laughter at the things they say. As we've noticed here at Eureka!, children do say the funniest things!

This year's ‘Santa’s Magical Toyshop’, a special workshop just for Early Years groups has been no exception. ‘Santa’s Magical Toyshop’ is about two mischievous elves (Twinkle and Jingle) who have not got very far through Santa’s job list and so need the children’s help to complete the festive tasks before Santa’s returns.

Many of the Enablers at Eureka!, myself included, have been caught out laughing at some of the responses children give to Santa and his Elves alike. One such response was from a little boy who, when Santa asked ‘who would like a present?’, innocently declared:

“I’ve already got a present from a different Santa I saw last week!”

In another workshop Santa, on returning from his annual holidays with Mrs Clause, was met with the cries of one child shouting:

“…but where’s Mrs Clause gone?”

On leaving one particular workshop one child stated, whilst wagging his finger:

“Twinkle…you have been very mischievous today…you’ve got to be good”.

Such heart warming comments as these remind us all why we have chosen to work with children. Merry Christmas everyone!

Penny Dargan is in the Front of House team at Eureka!

Changing play

This week we read an article from the BBC website about how children's freedom to play has sadly declined over the last 50 years due to a number of factors including stranger danger, changes in architectural design and the increase in cars on the roads.

We were reminded of this quote from contemporary American psychiatrist Stuart Brown, M.D. who says:

"Those who play rarely become brittle in the face of stress or lose the healing capacity for humor."

The accompanying TV series Hop, Skip and Jump: The Story of Children's Play is available on BBC iPlayer

A Good Play

A Good Play

We built a ship upon the stairs
All made of the back-bedroom chairs,
And filled it full of sofa pillows
To go a-sailing on the billows.

We took a saw and several nails,
And water in the nursery pails;
And Tom said, “Let us also take
An apple and a slice of cake;”
Which was enough for Tom and me
To go a-sailing on, till tea.

We sailed along for days and days,

And had the very best of plays;

But Tom fell out and hurt his knee,

So there was no one left but me.

This poem by writer Robert Louis Stevenson, known for writing the children’s story Treasure Island, shows just how imaginative children are and how they can often entertain themselves for endless amounts of time using nothing but simple household objects. 

As a young child I can clearly remember spending many a wet day creating dens out of duvets and chairs with my younger sister and then holding tea parties in our new creation!

Learning through play with Walt Disney

We turn to Mickey Mouse creator, Walt Disney (1901-1966) today, who was born on 5 December 108 years ago. This quote embodies everything that Eureka! aims to be with its learning through play philosophy...

"I would rather entertain and hope that people learned something, than educate people and hope they were entertained."

Dirt can be good for children

‘Children should be allowed to get dirty’ according to scientists who have found being too clean can impair the skin's ability to heal, reported recently in this article from the BBC

It goes on to say that researchers from the School of Medicine in California believe that normal bacteria which lives on the skin trigger a pathway that helps prevent inflammation when we get hurt. The bugs dampen down overactive immune responses that can cause cuts and grazes to swell. Many believe our obsession with cleanliness is to blame for the recent boom in allergies in developed countries:

• Some experts are saying that the findings could provide an explanation for the ‘hygiene hypothesis’, which states that exposure to germs during early childhood primes the body against allergies.
• The lobby group Parents Outloud said the work offered scientific support for its campaign to stop children being mollycoddled and over-sanitised.
• A spokeswoman for Allergy UK said there was a growing body of evidence that exposure to germs was a good thing.

So what do you think? Should we be exchanging bubble baths for mud baths and are we in fact cleaning our hands, clothes, homes etc too much and ‘washing away’ all the fun of messy, outdoor play?

For parents, it can present a big dilemma. With literally 100s of adverts on TV and in newspapers and magazines telling us to kill every germ in sight, people do it, with the best intentions to ensure children have as healthy an environment as possible. Let’s think back though . . . how many of you scrambled through mud and squealed in equal delight and repulsion when you discovered a worm? Now be honest, how many of you wondered what it would feel or even, dare I say it, taste like? In my experience, slightly gritty with an earthy aftertaste – rather like the feel of spaghetti. The worm was cleaner when I put him back in the soil but I wasn’t and it felt great and here I am to tell the tale! Now I don’t recommend the activity generally but what I was doing, reflecting back, was engaging in imaginative, investigative and ultimately messy, dirty fantastic play and I was also discovering my world and taking risks (as well as finding out what a worm tasted like). And often returning to my mum with dirty grazed knees from falling over in stony soil, she would wipe away the blood and mud and send me off with a wagon wheel (which of course were much bigger back then!).

In fact aren’t we encouraging children to play outdoors even more now? Isn’t there also a huge campaign to get them out and about to grow their own vegetables in the garden – to dig, to sow, to plant, to harvest, to get out in all weathers and connect with the earth – I’d rather have a happy, stress-free muddy child than one who’s reluctant to get clothes dirty for fear of reprisal. Stick some old clothes on, that’s what I did.

So, as long as we remember the general rules of washing hands after the toilet and before touching and eating food, immune systems will balance themselves out, leaving children more time to discover their inner explorers, gardeners, botanists, zoologists, etc as they keep busy with playing and learning – the thing they do best!

Liz Smallman is Head of Learning at Eureka!