From start to finish on the new Nursery play area

Part of my role here at Eureka! as the Exhibition Manager is to manage projects around the museum. Over the past few months I have been working on the new outdoor play area for the Eureka! Nursery. It replaces the old play area in front of the 1855 Building, on the grass of the Eureka! Park.

While my role calls for me to design exhibits inside the gallery, for this project, we have been fortunate enough to be able to employ the skills of a landscape designer, who was able to help bring our concept for the Nursery play area, as a natural play area to life.

As my background is in design, I was able to work closely with the designer to ensure we got a design that fulfilled all of our requirements. In order to get to the stage of issuing a brief, there were several stages we needed to go through first of all!

Before we were even able to hire our landscape designer, we had to apply for planning permission. This is because the proposed site was adjacent to our 1855 grade three listed building. As project manager, I was responsible for submitting this application. It can take several months for a decision to be reached, but thankfully our application was successful and we were able to proceed.

Once our application had been granted  I held internal meetings with the rest of the Eureka! team which included our Director of Play and Learning, and the Nursery Manager and communicated the project requirements to the designer. Before writing a brief for what we wanted to see in the play area, I went on research trips to visit other successful nursery play areas .

The brief had to include examples, to give the designer guidance on what we wanted to see. I produced some design sheets based on my findings, and other research I had done. It was also important that the brief recognised the practical considerations, such as fencing, entrance and exit gates to the play area and making sure it was sizeable enough to hold an entire group from the Nursery.

Based on our content, we gave a brief to the designer, who was then able to present several design concepts to us. We chose a final design picking bits that we liked from each design, which has resulted in the creation of a natural play area that we set out to achieve. The new play area will is very natural, using timber, sand and stone, in all sorts of colours, sizes and textures. A unique mosaic water feature encourages interaction, with children able to affect the water flow. A mini nature trail runs along one edge of the site, and come the Spring will be filled with different wild flowers, herbs and interesting shrubs like bamboo, and will encourage children to use all of their senses to explore their new outdoor habitat.

The design plan submitted for the Nursery play area

My favourite feature is the large, permanent timber story chair, which will be used for story time outside. I really like the idea of the new area having different uses, whether it is for play, exploration or story time.

Our designer then worked the concept drawings up into detailed plans, and, delivered them to a firm of contractors to start work on the play area. While I wasn’t laying sod or installing the tunnel, as project manager part of my job was to co ordinate deliveries and make sure things turned up on time! One of my main responsibilities was also to make sure that the site remained safe, as we want to ensure that even during construction, our visitors have a great experience at Eureka!.

It is always exciting seeing a project progress from start to completion. Project management is a challenging role, and at times quite stressful – especially when faced with adverse weather conditions. Despite this, I really enjoy my varied role here, as I get to meet and work with lots of different people, and no day is ever the same!

Amanda Phillips is the Exhibition Manager 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

How to make a Jack-o-lantern

Grab your coats, scarves and hats because autumn is finally here. With the chilly weather comes Halloween, one of the spookiest nights of the year. On the 31st of October the graveyards will come alive and the little ghosts and ghouls will all be out getting their ‘haunt on’.

All across the country, boys and girls will be finding their capes, fangs, and broomsticks and taking part in lots of different Halloween based activities. Some people will have a spooky Halloween party, and others will go ‘trick or treating’ around their neighbourhood. But for us here at Eureka! there is one Halloween activity that we like best of all, with the spookiest fruit to be found: the pumpkin!

Now you might think the pumpkin is a vegetable, but because it has seeds inside of it, like other hard shelled squash it’s actually a fruit. You see it mostly around Halloween, and it can be used for many different things. Boil, bake, steam, roast, mash or even put it in a pie! And, the best part about the pumpkin is you can have a fun art project and also get in one of your ‘five-a-day’.

Here at Eureka! we love to have a good pumpkin carving, and making our very own ‘Jack-o-lanterns’. Although the first Jack-o-lanterns in Ireland were made with turnips and swedes, most are now made with pumpkins and making your own is both easy and lots of fun!

Here are some tips on how to make your very own Jack-o-lantern!

Please remember that all of the carving must be done by an adult, as the skin of a pumpkin is very tough.

1. Find yourself a really big pumpkin. You can find them in most supermarkets around Halloween.
2. Take your pumpkin home and give it a good wash.
3. Using a carving knife, or a pumpkin carving set, carve a ‘lid’ into the top of your pumpkin. Do not throw away the lid, as you will need it later!
4. Using your hands, scoop out all of the seeds and hollow out the inside of the pumpkin. Why not roast some of the seeds to see how they taste?
5. Use a black marker pen to draw your design on to the outside of your pumpkin.
6. When you have your design just right, carefully cut out the pattern to make the scary face.
7. Then place a small candle inside the pumpkin.
8. Get an adult to light the candle and place the lid back on top of the pumpkin.
9. Finally, place your pumpkin in a window looking out on to the street, and give everybody a fright!

Top tip: If you don’t want to carve the pumpkin you can also paint the outside with a scary face or decoration!

Enjoy your pumpkin carving and Happy Halloween!

Ben Guilfoyle is an Outreach 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

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.