Eureka! Police Summary Report: April 2012

Updates from Eureka! Police for the month of April 2012.


Fraud at The Post Office
3.18pm on 2 April 2012
Officer in attendance: PC Fearnley
A girl of approximately four years of age was found to be impersonating a postal worker. Attempts to arrest her ended in a ‘STAMP-ede’. Boom boom!


Shoplifter in Marks and Spencer’s 
11.03am on 4 April 2012
Officer in attendance: PC Field
A two year old female was witnessed walking away from the M&S shop with a trolley full of unpaid goods. Items stolen included a synthetic potato and large plastic T-bone steak.  The suspect was returned to her Mother who got ‘well done’ by the Officer in attendance. (Steak - well done - geddit!?)


Motoring Offences - Eureka Garage
11.49am on 12 April 2012
Officer in attendance: PC Fearnley
A six year old male was identified driving a Eureka! vehicle in a wild and erratic manner. Upon questioning the male was found to not possess a valid Eureka! vehicle licence. After a brief discussion on the Highway Code the child was sentenced to two minutes community service washing cars in the Eureka! car wash.


Bank Robbery - Halifax Bank
Between 12.40pm and 12.50pm on 16 April 2012
Officers in attendance: PCs Fearnley and Field
The Eureka! Bank vault was infiltrated by an organised gang of school children on a sugar rush following their lunch break. A number of vaults were ‘compromised’ and banknotes and withdrawal forms left strewn on the floor. Officers examined CCTV footage and withdrawal forms and have identified the names of suspects. The attending Officers are ‘banking’ on swift arrests being made. Ha! Banking!


Loitering on the Bench
2pm on 22 April 2012
Officer in attendance: PC Fearnley
A man of  64 was found asleep on the bench in the Eureka! Town Square. The Officer woke the man, who explained that his grandchildren had “worn him out”. The Officer sympathised. No further action required.


Health and Safety ‘Breach’  – The Dig 
2.15pm on 24 April 2012
Officer in attendance: PC Field
A small group of 5 – 8 years old were found to be working in the Eureka! Dig without the correct safety equipment and without appropriate permits. When asked to identify their Supervisor, the group pointed to a man they referred to as “Dad”, who quickly issued his workforce with hard helmets and high visibility jackets. No further action required.


If anyone has information relating to these or any other offences at Eureka! The National Children's Museum, please email PC Fearnley or PC Field. 

A visit to the Kinder Museum, Frankfurt

Whilst on holiday in Frankfurt, Germany, I happened across the Kinder Museum Frankfurt and, not one to pass up an opportunity, I popped in to have a look at how play and education is done German style.


Both Eureka! and the Kinder Museum share much in common in terms of ethos, which their website states is: "[The museum] offers… a hands-on oriented learning experience. In all its exhibits the visitors are encouraged to play an active role".


And what really chimes with me as Eureka!'s Playwork Co-ordinator was this following statement on the museum’s website: “Touching, testing, trying out: independent thinking and an autonomous learning environment are central to the children's museum”. Absolutely! One of the things we tell our school party visits at Eureka! is to ‘get their busy fingers on’ and really explore and learn in the museum by pushing, twisting and pressing the exhibits.


Now I am particularly squeamish, and the sight of blood makes me feel a little ‘funny’, so it was rather unfortunate that I timed my visit to coincide with the ‘Blood Suckers’ theme... Through a variety of hands-on exhibits and practical exercises that visitors can carry out, I got to learn about a rogue’s gallery of skin piercing, blood sucking critters, from fleas to leeches. 


Looking at the exhibits and the experiments on offer, as well as the Early Years play area, the Kinder Museum could easily have something to occupy an age range from 0 up to early teens.


I was particularly impressed by the re-use of electrical wiring and electrical parts to make your own blood sucking parasite model. The children even got to handle wire strippers whilst making models, which added an element of learning ‘with risk’ which I know that children love.


In terms of the size of the museum, for any regular Eureka! visitor the comparable area would be that of one of the Our Global Garden galleries. The Kinder Museum does however make great use of the space it has available. As well as hands-on exhibits, such as using a crank to emulate the jaws and blood sucking apparatus of a ‘critter’, there are areas for practical experiments and comfortable reading areas - all done without feeling cluttered.


The gallery had also been cleverly themed, going from a bright and airy reception area to a darker area with red lighting and red blood cell themed draping - it was an excellent contrast and it did feel as if you were travelling down a vein or an artery. 

I enjoyed the Kinder Museum and found it interesting to see how a city centre based museum that operates very differently from Eureka! in using a single ‘rolling’ gallery concept can work. Coupled with the friendly and approachable staff, should you find yourself in Frankfurt I really would recommend a visit.


For more information, take a look at the Kinder Museum Frankfurt website.


Or for Frankfurters with an interest in seeing play and education in England, here’s the Eureka! website.


Kevin Field
Specialist Play Enabler

Kidspace Children’s Museum, California.

Kidspace children's museum in California

Kidspace is a children’s museum in Pasadena, California. Its aims and goals are very similar to Eureka!'s as it is structured around a learning through play philosophy, and aims to “inspire learning through self-directed, interactive experiences and play in the arts, sciences and humanities that enrich children, families and the community”. 

I was in the USA recently with Rebecca, one of the other Enablers here at Eureka!, and decided to go and pay the people at Kidspace a little visit. Children’s museums are extremely popular in America, with at least twenty-nine of them in California alone so, no matter where we were, we would have had no problem in finding one, but it just so happened that Kidspace was only a fifteen minute drive from where we were staying. We rang up, explained that we were members of the Eureka! team, and were invited for a tour around the museum. Awesome.

Kidspace caters for children aged 0 to 9 years old and, although Kidspace is a lot smaller than Eureka!, there is still a lot for children to do. We didn’t get a chance to play on all of the exhibits, but even with our time limitations it took us a good two hours to make our way around the five galleries .

The Kidspace galleries are:

The Early Childhood Learning Centre

• EarlyChildhood Learning Centre – A gallery where children aged  0-4 years can play, dance, sing, read at their own pace, and where child-adult interaction is encouraged.
• Central Courtyard – One of the few places in the museum where parents are allowed to sit and relax, the courtyard offers children water fountains and an outdoor dig-it build-it area.
• The Digging Deeper Gallery – As one of the main galleries, Digging Deeper offers children the chance to get up close and explore nature. Digging Deeper also has real insects on show, fossils to unearth (see the video on the right!), and an amazing Nature Exchange (which I’ll talk about later).
• Wisteria Courtyard – An actual child-sized road for children to peddle trikes around whilst learning the meaning of everyday road symbols.
• The Gardens – The gardens has a lot to offer. Vegetable gardens, a climbing wall, waterwheel and water cycle exhibit. All the different plants offer a huge range of colours and smells, and the winding paths make everything feel that little bit more magical.

Bugsy's Diner in Digging Deeper

Just like Eureka!, Kidspace uses its surrounding environment to its advantage. Being situated at the foot of the Pasadena hills, and in the grounds of the Arroyo Seco Park, Kidspace is surrounded by lots and lots of nature. There is a giant park at the front and a giant forest to the rear and, because of this, a lot of the exhibits are designed around nature. The main gallery, Digging Deeper, offers a lot in the way of this. We were able to come face-to-face with scorpions, a baby goliath spider (which absolutely terrified me), and even bumble bees. We even got to watch a show all about how bees communicate through different ‘dances’, which were re-enacted by one of the Educators, who are similar to our Enablers here at Eureka!

The Nature Exchange

One thing I must talk about though is the Nature Exchange. As a way of getting children engaged with the world around them, and as an introduction to trading, collecting and making observations I thought that this was brill. Children are encouraged to learn while exploring, so if the children discover anything they find particularly interesting they can either collect it, or make a note of it by drawing a picture or writing a description. The children can take their findings to one of the Educators at the Nature Exchange, who will award the child points for their discovery. Over time the child can accumulate points which they can then trade in at the Nature Exchange for ‘nature based’ rewards - things like small shells for a few points, and large pine cones for a lot of points. Not only this, but the children are encouraged to keep making discoveries  away from Kidspace, which they then bring with them when they return, so in this way the learning never stops. I really did like this a lot.

Some of the items traded in at the Nature Exchange

There is so much to talk about that I can’t possibly fit it all into one post, but you can always visit the Kidspace website if you want to have a closer look at what they offer.

Eureka! and Kidspace are both children’s museums, and they both offer a learning experience for children that is built around play and discovery, however they are both very different in how they offer this. I think it has a lot to do with the environment in which the museum is set. Anyway, that’s just a little bit about our trip to Kidspace Children’s Museum in Pasadena, California. It’s really awesome and we had a brilliant morning there, so if you’re ever in the area you should check it out.

Benjamin Guilfoyle

Early Years Enabler 

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