Early days with the Eureka! Team

If you’re reading this, then I’m sure that you’ve been to Eureka!, but if you haven’t then let me tell you about how I’ve just started experiencing it as a new Enabler working in the museum.

Eureka! is an amazing place. I’ve never worked with a group of people who are so ludicrously happy. When I started at Eureka!, it was already August and the summer holidays were already in full swing. Just tonnes of families, including hundreds of children, would queue up every day to come and visit us in the museum.

Enjoying the sunshine on the E! Beach and Park this summer.

I’ll be honest, the energetic atmosphere that Eureka! has, has been slightly daunting. Even for me, having left university with a Performing Arts degree! I thought I’d be used to dealing with masses of people and upbeat environments. As awesome as everything looked, it was all totally alien to me. I really had thrown myself into the deep end! But in retrospect I guess there was no other way of doing it.

I’ll never forget the first day that I was introduced to Scoot, yes, Scoot the robot. The way he manages to engage with the children about all the things they have seen and done on their visits to Eureka! is truly fascinating. The children’s faces light up as he shares his knowledge of the world and answers their questions. He once told me that he had auditioned to be in Star Wars, but came to work at Eureka! after he had been beaten to the part by R2-D2.

It’s all a bit surreal. I mean, one minute I might be the manager of a bank or helping children talk to Scoot, the next I might be accompanying a giant gnome or playing parachute games in the Eureka! park.

At Eureka! we try and run lots of different workshops that will fuel the imagination and draw out the creativity of the children that visit us. Now, I have done a few of these workshops and activities and believe me I have loved doing them all, but for me, my favourite (so far) has got to be the Carnival workshop.



Wow! It was awesome fun! First, we learned all about carnivals, and learn how to march and chant to our very own carnival beat. Then we got messy making funky carnival hats and shakers! We followed that up by going on a carnival parade of our own around the Eureka! Town Square and onto the Wonder Walk.

As the newbie to the Eureka! Enabler team, I couldn’t really ask for more. Everyone is super friendly and very welcoming as a team. I’ve already done too many things to write about in one post, and I know that there are going to be many more experiences for me to write about in the future. Okay, so I’ve only been here over the summer and I’m not a Eureka! veteran just yet, but believe me, I’m getting there!

Ben Guilfoyle is an Outreach Enabler at Eureka! The National Children's Museum

Playing with science: summer educational shows at Eureka!

With a successful summer just finished, I wanted to write a bit about the educational experiences we’ve provided schools during the summer term. It’s a time you might think is a bit more relaxing as everyone looks forward to the holidays, but here at Eureka! play and learning doesn’t stop. During the summer term, we offer schools the chance to experience science shows as part of an educational visit to the museum. Developed entirely in-house by our Learning Team, science shows are a great way of teaching scientific concepts to a large number of children in a fun and interesting way.

Feeling some forces during a science show.

Over the years we have developed a long list of interactive, drama-based workshops covering all areas of the curriculum, but the science show format with its ‘show and tell’ lecture presentation style marked a new venture for us when we embarked on our first show back in 2007 called ‘Splash!’  Aimed at Key Stages 1 and 2 this show looks at all things water related - where it comes from, some of its properties, fun things you can do with water and the importance of saving it.

Presented by our resident science duo Fizz and Flash, Splash! is a great show for a mixed age audience. Even though early KS1 pupils may not fully understand all of the concepts, they still find it visually stimulating and we’ve even performed the show in small rural schools where the audience age range has been from reception to Year 6! Highlights of the show include making water disappear, a water conservation version of Play Your Cards Right and the giant bubble finale where a lucky member of the audience gets to step into a giant bubble!

Fizz and Flash demonstrating the giant bubble in Town Square.

In 2008 we developed a new show based on forces called ‘Feel the Force’. Aimed at Key Stage 2, this time Fizz and Flash are joined by Ted the astronaut bear and explore the different types of forces, demonstrating what they are and why they are so important.   

Forces can be a difficult topic to teach so this show aims to turn a relatively dull subject into a memorable learning experience with lots of hands-on demonstrations and audience participation.

The latest addition to our science show repertoire was developed in 2009. We wanted to write a show with a human body theme and felt that focusing on the digestive system would give us lots of interesting concepts to explore so we came up with ‘From the Chew to the Poo!’ for Key Stage 2 pupils.

This show follows the fascinating journey of a banana and peanut butter sandwich from the moment it is eaten to the moment it leaves the body as waste. Through a series of interactive activities children find out how saliva in the mouth breaks down food in order for it to be swallowed, how our bodies retain the vitamins and minerals our bodies need and more amusingly how it gets rid of what we don’t need.

This is definitely the yuckiest of our three shows and I’m sure our Enablers didn’t think they’d be making ‘poo’ on a daily basis when they came to work at Eureka! but it’s a topic that most kids find hugely fascinating and we get some fantastic comments and pictures from schools following their visit.

It’s definitely been a challenge writing and developing these three shows but thankfully they’ve all proved to be successful additions to our school’s programme. So much so that they also form part of our Outreach provision where schools can book for our Enablers to come and deliver a show in their school.

We’re developing a totally new show now for 2011 which will have a chemistry theme and probably lots of fizzes and bangs - hopefully though we won’t blow ourselves up in the process!

Jenny Parker is the Play and Learning Coordinator at Eureka! The National Children's Museum.

On ‘Tour’ with Mission: Active Future

There’s so much to Enabler’s job, and not all of it is in the museum. Take last month. Along with two other Enablers, Sarah and Alistair, we were chosen to help bring Mission: Active Future out to Cross Flatts Park in Leeds as part of a Breeze on Tour event from 17 – 18 August. Thanks to funding from the Leeds Community Foundation, we ran eight free half hour sessions each day between 12 pm and 5 pm.

Mission: Active Future is a huge expanding trailer fitted out like a funky children’s gym, with activities such as steppers, bikes and rowing machines. The activities exercise the body and the brain, so there are computer games about health and fitness and tactile activities such as building up the bones and muscles of an arm.

At the start of each session we show the children a DVD from ‘Activ8’; a group of 8 cartoon children from the future. (The future is a bleak one with, among other things, overgrown tennis courts and football players unable to finish a game because they are so out of breath). The children are challenged to change that future by adopting a healthy lifestyle now – starting with the challenges on the trailer.

We help with a fun warm up, and explain all 15 exhibits before setting the children off on a circuit. They have a minute for each activity, so one of us is in charge of the stop watch and calling time. I like to add some variety, so I don’t just stick with ‘time to move on’. The sessions are short, so we leave enough time for the children to cool down and enter into a poster giveaway competition, which encourages the entire family to complete a further eight weeks of healthy activities.

Although Mission: Active Future is aimed at children from 6-11 years old we had some very cute 4 year old brothers and sisters joining in with some of the simpler activities – and one very enthusiastic have-a-go dad! It proved to be very popular with all the participants; we even had some of the children from the previous day having another go. It was summed up by one very polite little boy who came up to me afterwards and said: ‘Thank you miss; that was very fun’.

Once again though, we were multitasking. We arrived early Thursday morning to a lovely blue sky and friendly looking white clouds. After setting everything up, a photographer arrived. An enabler’s job is never short of variety; that morning we were going to be models in a photoshoot! It was a real giggle, posing for shots over the next hour. We applauded Mark, the driver from Marshalls, whose truck brought M:AF to Leeds. We leaned, tilted and above all, smiled, smiled smiled! I never realised that smiling could be such hard work, but to be fair there was a great deal of genuine laughter going around.

The Eureka! Team at Cross Flatts Park with Mission: Active Future

We left the park each day at about 5:45 pm, exhausted but with the feeling of a job well done. I know from feedback we’ve received from previous sessions, with both schools and general public, that Mission: Active Future and the Activ8 characters can have a really positive influence on children’s activity levels and, most important, in the words of one child, it’s VERY FUN! (And anything that gets children interested in a healthy lifestyle has to be good).

Overall it was an amazing event: the park was full of activities of all kinds. There were giant inflatables, including a ‘gladiators’ type course and an inflatable football pitch! There was paint balling, a climbing wall, a huge ‘Breeze has got talent’ marquee – and, of course, us.

I’m sure our Activ8 would like to see the kind of future envisioned by Thomas Edison when he said:  ‘The doctor of the future will give no medicine, but instead will interest his patients in the care of the human frame, in diet, and in the cause and prevention of disease’.

Visit the Mission: Active Future website to find out more and to meet the Active8.

Jill Ward is an Enabler at Eureka! The National Children’s Museum.