Ever needed an extra pair of hands?

Trizia Wells, Helping Hands Project Lead

Is it really only 3 months since my last blog? Helping Hands has been zooming along since then, with two more Saturday Clubs, some fantastic parent focus groups, visits to special schools, training, training and more training - and last but by no means least, the launch of Eureka!'s unique Extra Pair of Hands Service.


Extra Pair of Hands (or, as I like to call it, EPOH) is unique in the UK.  There you are, a busy parent outnumbered by your children and trying to come up with an enjoyable, playful learning activity. To make life more difficult, one little darling likes indoors stuff and another wants to let off steam outside.  Where can you go so that everyone’s happy? (including you!) That’s easy - Eureka!


But for a family with a disabled child, the next round of questions is just beginning.  Your child uses a wheelchair, and has a hearing impairment. They are highly sensitive to flashing lights – and crowds! You’re not convinced you’ll be able to get them through the door, and once you do, will they be able to play with the exhibits along with their siblings? Can they get round all the galleries? Are there changing facilities? A quiet space to go if it all gets too much? If only you could talk beforehand to someone who really knows the museum, who can answer your questions, maybe even give you a hand on the day.

Well now you can! Families book their Extra Pair of Hands visit two weeks in advance, and the EPOH Enabler (Enablers are the amazing team that work here in the museum - enabling play!) not only gets in touch to answer all those questions, but will give them a hand for two hours on the day of their visit. 


It seems such an obvious and simple idea that you might wonder what the catch is. Well, having spent March and April piloting the service with Enablers and parents, I can report that I haven’t found one yet! 


One family visited with a little boy, we’ll call him Henry, who has a severe visual impairment.  Henry has visited Eureka! a couple of times before with his sister, but they never went in together – he would only play in the outside space. He could sense a lot of activity and noise inside, but not being able to see past the highly reflective windows and doors caused him a great deal of anxiety. That meant that his sister – we’ll call her Emma - had only ever visited Eureka! with one of her parents – the other always had to stay with Henry.  Henry and Emma had never played inside Eureka! together.

Our EPOH Enabler, Becky, spoke to Henry’s mum beforehand and together they planned the visit. Becky met the family at the start of Eureka!'s yellow brick road, armed with stickers and a smile. The first 15 minutes was spent in the outside space – Becky, Henry and his sister had great fun running round the sensory garden, sniffing the herbs and following the sound of the wind chimes.  Becky built up Henry’s confidence so that he was happy then to go inside Eureka! for the first time.


Becky’s expert knowledge of the museum, our resources, the way children learn through play, and her previous conversation with Henry and Emma’s mum, meant that she could steer the family away from areas that might have caused anxiety, as well as capitalise on those the children particularly enjoyed. When she saw how much Henry liked playing in our Sound Space gallery, she brought out a set of drums for the two children to play with, which kept them thoroughly entertained for ages.


In the family’s words, they “had an absolutely brilliant time, and we’ll definitely be coming back”. Becky got a real buzz out of being able to work so closely with Henry and Emma and help the whole family enjoy their visit. In fact all the EPOH Enablers who did the pilot have requested to be first in line for families booking the service.


Other lovely things that the pilot families said:

• “Our Enabler showed us things in Eureka! we’d never seen before – we were blown away!”
• “Our EPOH gave ten times the value to a normal visit”
• “My (autistic) son can’t wait to go back again, normally he doesn’t like anywhere new”

So what was it that Becky (and Karys and Ross, our other EPOH Enablers) did to make their time at Eureka! so enjoyable? They asked questions, listened to the answers and made suggestions. Parents know their children’s needs best, but they might not know all the ways that Eureka! can offer a playful learning experience. The Enablers’ training and expertise meant they can help families plan a visit that brings the two together.


Suggestions don’t have to be costly
The Enablers offered small, practical solutions – stickers to help Henry think of Eureka! as a happy place to be; ear defenders for the autistic child who was sensitive to sound; meeting the family of a wheelchair-using child at the car to help them into the museum. Suggestions which cost nothing more than thought and time. 

Try before you buy
Families who already have an annual pass can book two EPOH visits per year, but here’s the other unique thing about the service – if you don’t have an annual pass and you’re really not sure about laying out a load of dosh to visit somewhere you’ll never go back to – you can still try out our Extra Pair of Hands service. Just ring and book your visit two weeks in advance and, on the day, your visit will be free. We are confident that you will have had such a good time that you will want to return – and then you can buy an annual pass and book your second EPOH visit! 


Word is spreading fast about Extra Pair of Hands and we’re taking bookings now. Initial feedback is very positive, and I am sure this unique service is going to be very popular with families of disabled children. I am looking forward to telling you lots of lovely EPOH stories and bringing you lots of pictures in my next blog!


Trizia Wells
Helping Hands Project Lead 


The Extra Pair of Hands Service is part of Eureka's Helping Hands Project, funded by the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation.

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. 

Eureka! inspires 'Creativity in the Classroom'

At Eureka! we are known for our commitment to making learning the fun, exciting activity that we believe it should be; whether it’s here in the museum or out in the community with one of our outreach activities/shows. Manchester Metropolitan University decided that it would be great if we could pass on some of our ideas and enthusiasm to some of their student teachers at their conference about creativity in the classroom. We agreed, and enlisted the help of Captain Sam (the Scurvy suffering pirate) and me (otherwise known as Flora Explorer) and we headed west.

Captain Sam, aka. Darren

After a brief introduction to Eureka! (Who we are and what we do) from Jenny Goodall, our Play & Learning Assistant, it was over to us. Our first section highlighted the fun that a bit of drama, song, and dance can bring to learning. Captain Sam (that was Darren Fearnley - pictured, by the way) set the scene and then it was all hands to the deck (pardon the pun) as we got the students on their feet joining in with the ‘Scurvy Song’; a swashbuckling sea shanty with a riotous dance that tells the true story of Dr Lind’s clinical trial; which succeeded in discovering the cure for scurvy. (Not gargling with sulphuric acid, as it turns out!).


Next Flora (that’s me, remember) demonstrated the effective use of multi-sensory learning as she dived into her explorer’s bag and pulled out an assortment of spices – not just the boring powdered stuff but the actual parts of the plant; Vanilla seed pods, nutmeg nuts, cinnamon bark, cloves (dried flower buds) and a whopping great piece of ginger (which is a rhizome, or underground stem, if you’re interested). The students listened to me talking about the spices and read about where they came from on little cards, but the best bit was actually touching and smelling – or maybe it was the bit where I produced a packet of ginger biscuits so they could involve their sense of taste as well!


We produced some giant laminated coins to demonstrate that even ‘sums’ can be fun if you are playing a game and then went on to play with science – with some colourful, explosive, messy and amazing demonstrations.
The students were really receptive and asked lots of questions so I am sure that at least some of the things they saw will be finding their way into classrooms in the future. I felt it was a very worthwhile trip and the university agreed, giving us the following feedback:

"I just want to thank you for your excellent workshop. The evaluations were very positive and in the final session when the students were sharing their experiences, they discussed the workshop with enthusiasm."

I love the thought of enthusiastic teachers because if teachers are having fun teaching then children will be having fun learning – and that’s the ideal.


Jill Ward, Eureka! 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 

Clowning 101 – The Eureka! way

Play is at the heart of everything that we do here at Eureka!, and one of the ways we thought we could bring even more play into the workplace and museum generally was through clowning - Not your average face paint, big shoes and pie in the face clowning, but by bringing the ideologies and techniques behind the performance into our day-to-day museum duties. So Clown Training 101 was devised and, with a handful of enablers, the Eureka! Clowning team was born. We began by looking at Victorian clowns from the travelling circuses up to modern day stereotypical clowns, and their archetypes and lives. We then took some of the elements of clowning and created our own ways of clowning.

What makes a Eureka! clown

Our clowns are childlike in their attention to things: everything is new and amazing - they explore every object to its full extent. They are imaginative and creative - everything can be anything to a clown - a shoe is a telephone, a scarf is a bridge, and even a flute is a stethoscope.

They are repetitive. They will try things out again and again, often to fail, over and over again; no matter how many times they see that banana skin, they will always slip on it.

Clowning is the most emotionally honest form of performance; they wear their hearts on their sleeves. Clowns laugh, cry, show their joy and despair through their very emotional facial expressions.

And, most importantly, a clown is a direct link to the audience. During a performance they break the fourth wall by acknowledging the audience, showing things to them and even getting audience members involved in their antics.

Jill, Tasha and Ross discover something shocking!

Wearing the red nose

After our research and a few warm-up exercises we were given our red clowning noses. We were not to take these off as they were the prop that marked us as clowns.

Clowns are very silly - they are the subject of ridicule, and if we wished to be clowns we had to be silly. This was quite daunting for some of the group as they did not want to look like fools in front of their team leaders, colleagues and friends. In an attempt to break down everybody's inhibitions we were told to pick a space in the theatre. The music started, and we had to take to the stage as clowns, looking at the audience and fully exploring the stage (ignoring the other clowns at first). A variety of strange props were thrown into the spaces such as hats, wigs, instruments and toys. We had to work with these props, using them as something they weren't actually made for, which must have been quite a sight for the team leaders watching - grown adults wearing red noses, with wigs as shoes and recorders used as a splint for a poorly finger! We then had to interact with the other clowns, making up little scenarios, whilst looking at and involving the audience, emphasising our emotions and facial expressions.

Becky looks on in horror as Darren & Claire are stuck on the other side of the gorge!

All restraint, inhibition and hesitation was now long gone and everyone was buzzing. We all had the techniques nailed and were in a great mood - making jokes, laughing along with everyone and offering ideas and suggestions to each other. As a final performance we were split into three teams of three, each given a scenario and asked to devise a performance: at first just improvising with the music, then structuring a beginning, middle and end. The three scenarios were:

1. There is a massive gorge that the clowns want to cross, but there is no bridge.
2. One clown is having a picnic when the other two appear, then one fly appears, followed by a swarm of insects attacking the clowns.
3. One clown has an illness, and eventually the other two catch it.

Becca, Dan and Abi notice the first of many flies to come and ruin their picnic

I was in group number 2, the picnic group. After a few run-throughs we decided that one clown should have the picnic all to himself, then the other two came but he would not share his picnic. The flies gradually appeared, one at a time, and the clowns began slapping themselves and each other in an attempt to get rid of the flies, which resulted in the picnic getting trodden on. Realising that the picnic had been ruined, the two clowns left the original clown alone with the remains of his picnic. By using a bit of slapstick, looking at the audience and exaggerating expressions we created a funny and successful 5 minute performance.

Bringing clowning into every day

After all three groups had performed we settled down and began to think about how we could  incorporate the clowning ideas into museum life, such as:

• Using audience participation and acknowledgement during our science shows and workshops.
• Exaggerating our expressions and actions to make things more exciting to watch.
• Bring some of the playfulness into our time in the galleries - act as if everything is new to us, therefore more exciting for us and the children there who really are experiencing objects for the first time.
• Devising a clowning show which we enablers can perform on an Up To You hour or as an event for the public, where we can get families involved in creating their own clowning show based on everything we learnt during the training.  This would be different from our existing 'Clowning Around' workshop, which is aimed at more traditional clowning with big costumes, facepaint and using props such as fake weights and rubber chickens.

  The Eureka! Clowning School's first graduates!

Our Clowning session has really given everyone involved such a boost to our ways of working, giving us new ideas and increased confidence in performing. We have loads of ideas about new things we can do in the galleries and ways to interact with kids - even the simplest of ideas such as putting on our red noses is full of potential for a better visitor experience.

Come and join us for a bit of Clowning Around in January 2012.

Becca McAusland

Enabler and Exhibitions Assistant

Welcoming Brownies, Cubs and Beavers to Eureka!

This November we’ve had a busy month with a number of special events for uniformed groups.

Over the first two weekends of November we welcomed 868 Brownies, Beavers, Cubs and their leaders to the museum to take part in the first ever Eureka! Badge Days. In previous years we’ve run badge days based on such themes as astronomy and circus skills but thought that this time we’d see if we could come up with something based around the themes explored in Eureka!

 
The Eureka! badge
The design of the badge (pictured) was inspired by the man behind the Eureka! name - Archimedes himself and the special one-day events were created to allow children to explore as much of the museum as possible, inspiring them to discover and learn through play.

Chew to the Poo
The highlight of the sessions was definitely our science show ‘From the Chew to the Poo’ which explores the ins and outs of our digestive system by following the journey of a banana and peanut butter sandwich from the moment it is eaten till the moment it is… …well you can guess the rest!

It was certainly a challenge coming up with a programme that really sums up the essence of the museum but I hope we managed it. We’ve had some great feedback from leaders so far and with one or two tweaks I think we’ll definitely be planning to do more Eureka! Badge days in the future.

A Night at the Museum

The other big event this month was our Sleepover on Friday 18th November. We haven’t held a sleepover here since March 2008, so many of the staff have never experienced spending the night in the museum and were just as excited as the children! It was great fun and all the children and group leaders really got into the spirit of the evening. The night can best be summed up by Stephanie Armitage of 3rd Yeadon Brownies who wrote…

"Eureka! hosted a brilliant sleepover which was attended by around 100 Brownies, Scouts and their leaders to celebrate Universal Children's Day.

The evening was packed with fun including clowning around, a splash workshop which was a fun, water-based science session (see the giant bubbles photos) and having the museum to ourselves to explore all evening. Arriving just after 6pm, we were looked after by the Eureka! team until midnight when it was lights out time!

The girls and leaders had a brilliant time. The Eureka! staff were great fun & had organised an excellent evening of scientific fun. After supper everyone joined in with a selection of songs including the Meatball Song and Crazy Moose. It was great bedding down in the floor in the 'Sound Section' of the museum. The clunks and creaks of the building cooling down didn't seem to stop the girls getting to sleep. They were exhausted after such an action packed evening so even Brown Owl's snoring didn't disturb them. Other leaders and their groups were dotted around the building. The Eureka! staff slept upstairs in their offices!"

We’re holding two more sleepovers in 2012 on Friday 16th March and Friday 18th May, and we still have spaces available on both. These all night extravaganzas are open to schools as well as uniformed groups and are suitable for children aged 8-11yrs. For more information please email Jenny Parker.

You can view soe more photos from the sleepover in our Facebook Photo Album.

For further information about Girlguiding and how to join please visit the Girlguiding UK Website.

Jenny Parker, Eureka! Play and Learning Co-ordinator

Volunteering at Eureka!

Over the summer I volunteered at Eureka! The National Children’s Museum in Halifax. When I first started volunteering I hardly interacted with the children at all, but now I feel more than capable of meeting and engaging with children.

I have enjoyed volunteering very much, especially meeting children of different ages and from different backgrounds. I found working in the gift shop enjoyable, and learned all about the different aspects of the job from stock take, the paperwork required to make a gift shop run, keeping the shop fully stocked at all times, pricing, and customer interaction. I have also loved working with all the different exhibits, and have found that it has helped me to gain more confidence, particularly to interact with children and their parents.

The Eureka! Shop

I have done so much but, for me, my biggest successes are that I am more confident in myself and I have learned many transferable skills, from making action plans to improving my interpersonal skills, to name but a few. I also feel that my biggest achievement has been being able to work as a part of a team as, again, it has helped boost my confidence both with children and with the Eureka! staff.

I also feel that I can use these experiences in the future to help me with my autism. I have loved working at Eureka! as I found the environment calming and safe. I hope that the time I have spent at Eureka! and the experiences that I have gained will help me progress along the career path that is right for me. All the staff have been extremely friendly and helpful.

Eureka! is a fun and friendly place to work, and I highly recommend this experience to anybody else thinking about volunteering.

Michael Harris, Eureka! volunteer

Graveyard Walks

Graverobber, telling spooky
Halloween tales at Eureka!

Hi there everybody - I just arrived from Victorian Halifax to do a few graveyard walks. I’m a grave robber, or resurrectionist as I prefer to call myself. I was asked to take some children around and tell them some ghost stories as part of Eureka!'s Spooktacular Halloween week and I was happy to oblige (for a few gold coins, of course). 

My graveyard was haunted by a ghostly 900 year old monk, a ghostly horse and carriage driver, two headless corpses (one in chains and one playing the bagpipes) and another restless spirit shot full of holes (I call him the Holey Spirit!).

I particularly enjoyed telling my tales, as every one of them is a true story – tales of unexpected and grisly deaths that happened right here in Halifax; in sight of Eureka!, most of them!

The children helped me exorcise the restless spirits by reading their names to me, off their tombstones, so I could command them to move on. Well, I wouldn’t be doing this job if I could read and write, would I?  I rewarded them with gold coins from the Cragg Vale Coiners’ hoard -  they were very tasty I hear.

The graveyard is much more peaceful now so I can carry on my good work of supplying local hospitals with bodies for the doctors to dissect to increase their knowledge and move on the cause of medical science. So don’t call me a criminal; I’m a hero I am!

Banishing ghosts on a graveyard walk

You can take part in our Spooktacular Halloween event until 30 October...

Loose parts is AWESOME!

Wait… what? You don’t know what loose parts is? Well, let me bring you up to speed. The term ‘loose parts’ is just another way of saying ‘junk modelling’, and it’s a really cool, simple, fun activity that anyone can do.

Loose parts activities encourage open-ended learning, and are great tools to use with children of all ages and abilities, as it engages the imagination and helps to unlock creativity. Children love having the freedom to make and do whatever they want, so that’s what I try to give them.

I dedicated all of Sunday 25 September to loose parts, loading up the Imagination Space here at Eureka! with a whole host of bits and bobs that would otherwise have been thrown away. Big bits, little bits, plastics and fabrics, old boxes and tyres, scraps of fabric, garden canes and loads, loads more. We had a real treasure trove of junk just waiting to be made into something amazing. I also gave the children the opportunity to try their hand at designing by having a designer’s area where the children could plan their creation before attempting to make it. Boy, did we make some awesome stuff!

Creativity and FUN! at loose parts day, 25 Sept 2011

We had all sorts of amazing creations: monsters, robots, dolls and animals, right through to spaceships, trains, musical instruments, and bows and arrows. The photos here capture just a few of the amazing creations that we made. Even some of the Enablers came to join in the fun!

Loose parts day was a really big hit, and everyone who took part said that they thoroughly enjoyed themselves, both adults and children alike. Best of all, the children could take home everything that they had made - and why shouldn’t they? All the materials were things that we didn’t need, and the children spent a lot of time turning those unwanted objects into something so much better than what they were originally made for!

We had a lot of fun on loose parts day, and would hate for anybody to miss out being part of such a great opportunity to be creative, so come along and join in if you can. We’ll be holding our next loose parts day on Sunday 4 December. If you’d like to make something as cool as the creations in the pictures, why not come on down to Eureka! and join in the fun? Come along to use your imagination, be creative and make something fantastic!

Ben Guilfoyle
Specialist Play Enabler

Serious play

I could begin this blog by saying: ‘Here at Eureka we take training our staff very seriously’, because we do. But ‘serious’ suggests lectures, assessments, boredom and other things that are, well, serious! This was certainly not the case when it came to our ‘It’s Up To You’ training this month. Creative, spontaneous and hilarious are more like it.

Creative staff training helps inspire our Enablers when delivering programmes.

We were training our staff for something called the ‘It’s Up To You’ Hour. The idea was trialled last year and gave our Enablers a whole hour during the day in which they could do whatever they liked; tell a story, run a juggling workshop, take musical instruments into the galleries or other things of that nature. We found that our staff had many hidden talents which emerged through this initiative and the ‘Its Up To You Hour’ generated some of the best customer feedback we received in years. So we decided to re-launch the idea this year, timed with the hiring of a whole new batch of Enablers.

For the training we collected a vast number of resources; costumes, storybooks, props, and other diverse items. We then put the Enablers into groups and gave them the freedom to devise a full days worth of events using what we had in the room or anything they could find from the museum.

Complete freedom, however, can be intimidating, so we gave each group a simple scenario detailing how many visitors were in the museum and what the weather was like on the day they were planning for. This helped to inspire some of the events and made the enablers think about whether a particular event is suitable for varying visitor numbers.

‘We all need empty hours in our lives or we will have no time to create or dream’

The quote from child psychiatrist and author Robert Coles sums up or philosophy when executing the session. Creating a stimulating environment where the staff felt free to do what they wanted worked far better than having a structured training schedule as it gave them room to ‘Create and Dream’, though our hours were far from empty.

There was no shortage of ideas; staff devised a range of different activities, from manic games involving water balloons to quiet and calm origami folding. In this setting the Enablers were empowered to show off their many talents as musicians, magicians or historians.

Fun was had by all and this fun atmosphere will be directly passed onto our visitors who can expect varied spontaneous events and activities in our galleries in the future (particularly on weekends and quiet afternoons)!

So as we see training is a very important part of being an Enabler at Eureka, but I still wouldn’t say that ‘At Eureka we take training our staff very seriously’; I would rather say that ‘At Eureka we take training our staff very playfully’.

Ben Healey is a Team Leader at Eureka! The National Children's Museum

Walking the plank with Scurvy Sam

Life as an Enabler is full of challenges, and not all of them from the children we work with! Take outreach: you might not know that almost every day during the term times, one of us is out giving a workshop or programme at local schools. One recent visit was to Leeds, with my partner in the day's workshop, Enabler Michelle, where we gave the ‘Scurvy Sam’ workshop at Ingram Road School.

It was a two-workshop day, and we had just arrived from Todmorden, no thanks to our GPS. After lunch, we found our reliable van would no longer lock! Off we went though, there was a workshop to deliver!

Thirty-five children, aged nine to 11 were waiting to experience Scurvy Sam, delivered by Dr Lind, the 18th century naval surgeon who actually discovered the cause of Scurvy and Captain Sam, feared and respected pirate of the high seas. (That’s still Michelle and I, by the way). The ‘Scurvy Sam’ outreach is funded by the ‘Big Lottery Awards for All’ who are keen to put out a positive message to children about health.

Our stage was a hessian-cloth covered table with a huge pirate flag for Dr. Lind to hide on when he’s not on deck with Captain Sam. We put out a large treasure chest, covered in fishing nets and assorted sea-life, for the Captain sits to tell her story. To really complete the shipboard experience, there were assorted lanterns, fishing baskets and the aforementioned anchor and lifebelt strewn around for extra atmosphere.

Enabler Tasha with a heap 'o pirate treasure

Once we were set up I went to change into my pirate outfit; shirt, jewellery, jacket, fancy headgear and a great pair of buckled black boots I’d recently purchased from a local charity shop – perfect for Captain Sam. I walked back into the hall and nearly slid straight onto my behind! Fancy high-heeled boots and shiny school hall floors are not a perfect combination!

To describe the workshop in a nutshell; Captain Sam and her crew have been coming down with some '’orrible bodily conditions' and need to get better in time for her wedding in a month. They have captured Dr. Lind, who believes they are suffering from the scurvy; among other things. The children’s task is to diagnose the pirate’s symptoms, find out which vitamins and/or minerals they are lacking and what foods they need to eat to get better. They then examine the pirate’s diet – looking at ‘Ye Olde Plate that tells you how to eat well’ and remembering what they discovered in their research. Having come to the conclusion that it is the pirate’s diet that is the cause of all their problems, they then devise a new diet that will cure all the pirate’s and keep them fit and healthy.

The whole thing is a rollickingly good adventure; with very active pirate training (climb the rigging, fire the cannon and man the lifeboats for example) and, of course, a bit of song and dance for everybody to join in with. We take Dr Lind’s clinical trials and put them to the tune of ‘What shall we do with a drunken sailor’ – changing the words to:

What shall we do with a pirate sailor?(x3)
When he’s got the scurvy?

And the verses give the clinical trials and their results, e.g.

Gargle with sulphuric acid. (x3)
That just makes your throat sore!

(Incidentally, the real Dr. Lind is widely believed to have conducted the first ever clinical trials)

The song is accompanied by a hilarious pirate dance; which we knew would be a big hit because in training we were all practically crying with laughter when we learned it! The children did love it, and you’ll be pleased to know I did manage to stay on my feet, despite the fancy footwear!

Children getting 'hands on' at a Scurvy Sam workshop!

Near the end of the workshop the children, in four groups, had devised a day’s worth of food and drink from the range of food on offer.

Breakfast – corn flakes & milk, wholemeal toast with low fat spread and jam and fresh orange juice
Lunch       - baked potato & beans, crisps and cola
Dinner     - pasta Bolognese with salad and broccoli, water and a slice of cake
Snacks    - grapes, orange segments and carrot sticks

When we put the groups together they decided there was a bit too much sugar so the ‘lunch’ group immediately volunteered to change their cola for a strawberry smoothie. I thought overall it was a pretty successful menu.

The last part of the workshop involves us turning the children into a giant bar of chocolate … to show the relative percentages of sugar, fat, protein and flavourings contained in one! I do amuse myself sometimes imagining what a parent might think, when they ask their child what they did at school today, if they reply –

 'I was turned into a bar of chocolate by a pirate and an 18th century naval surgeon!'

After all the clearing away we set off to the car park with all our props to see if the van was still there - thankfully it was. Our satnav was still acting up, and she finally gave up the ghost, but luckily, we knew where we were and had a straightforward journey back to Eureka!

As always, it was a thoroughly enjoyable day, despite the technical problems.

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

The Adventures of Captain Wheelio Bear

Taking inspiration from the CBeebies show ‘Barnaby Bear’ several members of the Eureka! Enabler team created Eureka’s own version: ‘Captain Wheelio-Bear’. Wheelio is a small bear on wheels usually found in the Creativity Space Classroom; that is, when he’s not jet-setting off around the world of course!

Members of the Eureka! team take Wheelio with them whenever they go off on their own adventures, whether they’re gone long for a holiday or just taking Wheelio with them for a fun day out.

In the year that Wheelio has spent here at Eureka! he has: visited Snowdonia, Prague (where he wheeled across Charles Bridge), spent a  Christmas at home with one of our Enablers, celebrated New Year’s 2009 in Disneyland Paris, taken a cruise from New York to Canada, and just this month he came back from a second American cruise. He is certainly a well travelled bear!

Wheelio Bear in Times Square!

In the Creativity Space Classroom at Eureka! he even has his own wall display called ‘The Adventures of Wheelio-Bear’, which shows our visitors all of Wheelio’s worldly adventures and some of his thoughts on where he has been.

This little bear has definitely captured the hearts of the Eureka! team, many of whom can be seen walking around the museum wheeling Wheelio behind them! He has also become a hit with many of our visitors, who often share in a cuddle with him whilst visiting in the Creativity Space.

Next time you’re visiting us at Eureka! please let us know if you’ve been out and seen Wheelio Bear. Here at the museum we love to hear about his adventures.


Penny Dargan is the Early Years Specialist Enabler at Eureka!

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

Make time for a story

On the eve of National Storytelling Week I thought I'd tell you about some of the storytelling we get up to at Eureka!.

Although we use traditional and well-loved stories a lot of the time, (my favourite being ‘The Gruffalo’), we also tell a different kind of story; a story without a book. I love this kind of story as it allows me, as the storyteller, to really become part of the story. The basic story is the same but every narrator tells it in his or her own way.

‘The glow-worm who couldn’t glow’ written by Ben Healy, one of the enablers here, is based around a set consisting of a tree, some grass, some rocks, a few flowerpots and a watering can. I was amused the other week, when I came to tell the story, by the reaction of one young boy. I had previously delivered a science busking session, which he had obviously attended. Apparently not being familiar with the concept of multi-tasking, he enquired of me in a voice filled with equal amounts of suspicion and confusion “Is this ‘a story’ or is it … ‘an experiment’?” (I still wonder what experiment he thought those particular pieces of equipment might have been used for!)

Children of all ages love the story of little babyglow, who can’t go to a party until she learns to glow and sets out to find the wise old millipede to find out how. She meets many friends along the way – and a very mean earthworm! The story has a nice moral (that friends make you happy and that if you’re mean you end up having no fun) but it is also filled with lots of little nuggets of information. Take the following extract for example:

Babyglow has got stuck in a spider’s web and the spider appears and asks in a menacing voice...

SPIDER: Are you my dinner?

BABYGLOW: Ooh! I hope not!

SPIDER: Well, let’s find out; do you have big boogly eyes?

BABYGLOW: No, my eyes are quite small.

SPIDER: Well, do you have 6 spindly little legs?

BABYGLOW: No, I don’t have any legs.

SPIDER: Do you have wings?

BABYGLOW: No, no wings at all.

SPIDER: Then you’re not my dinner, you’re not a fly.

BABYGLOW: Do you only eat flies?

SPIDER: Yes, lovely crunchy flies – but spiders are a bit short sighted so I couldn’t tell what you were.

So, that tiny extract tells us that spiders eat flies and are quite short sighted and also gives some of the typical characteristics of a fly. It’s surprising how much children can learn without realising, just by listening to a story. I think storytelling can be a great educational tool. I leave you with words credited to a Native American proverb:

“Tell me the facts and I’ll learn. Tell me the truth and I’ll believe. But tell me a story and it will live in my heart forever.”

What stories do you like to tell your kids? Or what are your favourite stories from childhood?

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

Playing with science

The ‘enablers’ here at Eureka! are delighted to educate and, at the same time, entertain our visitors. We are also very keen to encourage, enthuse and excite the children (in fact many things beginning with ‘e’, it seems!). One of the ways we do this is by delivering science busking sessions. It’s amazing how people’s opinions of science change when they discover what fun it is to play with science. I always start my sessions with a question – “Who loves science?” I ask the question again at the end of the session and the response is always considerably more enthusiastic.

A 'science busking' session lasts about 20 minutes and consists of up to a dozen interactive demonstrations (of which we have a repertoire of about 40). For example, learning about density becomes magical when the children are introduced to ‘Bob the Pen Lid’, who has been trained to dive and float on command (providing you say the magic word –‘please’). When they spot the ‘trick’ and hear the explanation they are far from disappointed as I explain that science is actually better than magic. If Bob was magic I’d be the only person with a pen lid that obeys my commands; whereas, now that they all know the science, they can go home and make their own Bob and amaze their friends.

Most of the demonstrations are designed to be easily repeated at home in order to encourage children to try things out for themselves. I also tell a true story that shows that anybody can be a scientist – all you need to do is ask questions and try to find out the answer.

Sometimes we use a powder called Instasnow (a super absorbent polymer called sodium Polyacrylate) for one of the demonstrations. Water added to a scoopful in a child’s cupped hands produces a flurry of ‘snow’ cascading out of their hands and into a waiting bowl. We also do fabulous demonstration using milk, food colouring and washing-up liquid (see below). During one session a young boy, about six years old, asked “What would happen if you put that ‘magic’ powder into the milk and food colouring?” It was a good question, a scientist’s question, so what else could we do but put it to the test. We added a few scoops of Instasnow to the milk and it slowly soaked up the colourful milk, drawing it to the middle of the plate and making a colourful little snow ‘volcano crater’. We now do that demonstration ourselves – always giving credit to that six year old scientist who invented it.

Whenever I do those demos and tell that story I have to allow extra time at the end of the session because, invariably, I am inundated by a crowd of children asking “What if we put this in that?” and “Can we try mixing these together?” etc. It just goes to show that, given the opportunity, children are always incredibly eager to ‘play with science’.

Have a go at colour-changing milk at home

You'll need: milk (whole), a dinner plate, food colourings, washing up liquid and cotton buds.

Method

• Pour enough milk onto the plate to completely cover the bottom
• Add one drop of each of the different colours of food colouring to the milk. Keep the drops close together in the centre of the plate of milk
• Use a clean cotton bud to ‘marble’ the milk
• Repeat first two steps
• Take another cotton bud, place a drop of washing up liquid on the end and touch the middle of the milk with it. Look at that burst of colour!

 

Explanation

Milk might seem to be a liquid but actually it is mostly water with lots of little droplets of fat and protein and stuff floating in it. These little bits of solids are attracted to each other and bond together as if they were all holding hands, making ‘walls’ that the food colouring can’t pass! You can use your cotton bud to move the colours around the ‘walls’ to make a marbling effect.

When you add soap it actually breaks the bonds that are holding the little fat and protein droplets in place and they zoom off in all directions; which bumps the food colours and makes them zing off to the edge of the plate, giving you a real 'wow!' moment.

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