From over the hills and far away, celebrate World Book Day with The Jolly Postman today

What connects a giant picture book, envelope bunting and an umbrella full of leaves?

On World Book Day, Sally Sculthorpe, Schools Learning Manager at The Postal Museum shares their approach to delivering a book-based Early Years programme full of magic, mischief and occasionally mayhem.

 

The beginning…

The Jolly Postman programme is a literacy learning experience for early years children inspired by the much-loved book by Allan Ahlberg. In 2016, The Postal Museum secured a five-year license agreement with Penguin Random House and three-year funding from John Lyon’s Charity to develop the programme, including salary costs for a Project Officer.

The two-part programme delivers an outreach workshop in school, followed by a workshop in The Postal Museum. The programme aims to inspire a love of reading by bringing the book to life and uniquely linking the fictional story to the real history of the post. The fairy tale magic is put in a real-life context, to help children understand the importance of post in the past and identify its relevance to their own lives.

Children take on the role of Jolly Posties to help the facilitator, ‘Rosie Postie’, complete two postal missions. In the school outreach workshop, children deliver the post for fairy tale characters. In the museum mission children uncover curious post from long ago in The Postal Museum collection. The school workshop creates anticipation for the museum visit. In between (about two weeks) teachers extend the learning in their classroom teaching.

 

The middle…

The Jolly Postman inspires enjoyment of reading through active participation and encourages children to build their own story. Workshops use simple hand actions, like ‘time for tea’ and recurring motifs and rhymes, including a special delivery song to build confidence.

From the initial opening of the giant book, children are immersed in a sensory learning experience. As Jolly Posties, they cycle far away and back in time on imaginary bicycles to collect, sort and deliver the post. Each new delivery introduces a different type of post (eg postcards, letters, parcels). Children apply their knowledge of traditional tales and use literacy and numeracy skills to solve clues, even conjuring a spelling spell from a parcel of magic spoons.

Since September 2017, 2,785 children (aged 4 – 7) have taken part. A high number of schools rebooked for a second academic year and demand continues to grow.

Teacher feedback is used to review the programme and is essential to its success. 100% of teachers rate the programme as ‘Excellent’. Qualitative questions ask how workshops support the literacy curriculum and learning needs. Teachers highlight its inclusivity and that participation builds the confidence of even the most reluctant readers.

“Perfect balance of presentation and participation. There wasn’t one part the children didn’t enjoy! When the umbrella popped open and the leaves fell out, all the children gasped and were excited for what was going to happen next.”  Altmore Infant School

“The children were so engaged throughout. A super interactive experience. They loved it! So visual. Fantastic for ALL learners – even SEN.” St Bernadette’s Primary School

The Postal Museum regularly receives letters, postcards and pictures from Jolly Posties as further evidence of the lasting impact the programme has on the children.

 

The end… 

The Jolly Postman programme is funded by John Lyon’s Charity until June 2019. Penguin’s support will continue with a five-year royalty free licence, free books and schools marketing.

From September 2019, the programme costs will be paid by The Postal Museum. The success means the museum does not have to increase the cost to schools.

The Jolly Christmas Postman is also available in November and December. This seasonal workshop links to key curriculum topics including the weather and festivals and is exceptionally popular with schools.

 

The last word…

Simple is best! Believe in the power of the story and this will create magic learning moments.

Find out more: postalmuseum.org/for-schools

This blog post was written by Sally Sculthorpe, Schools Learning Manager at The Postal Museum

Reflecting on the findings of the UCM Nursery in Residence Project

This post first appeared in the University of Cambridge Museums & Botanic Garden ‘Connecting collections blog’, which you can find here.

 

After six months of reflection and writing about the University of Cambridge Museums Nursery in Residence, we are excited to be able to share the findings of our collaborative, practitioner-led research project.

‘Stand aside for a while and leave room for learning, observe what children do, and then, if you have understood it well, perhaps teaching will be different from before.’ – Loris Malaguzzi

In October 2017, nine children from a Cambridge City Nursery spent five consecutive mornings ‘In Residence’ at the Fitzwilliam Museum and Cambridge University Botanic Garden. The residency formed the basis of a multi-disciplinary practitioner-led research project by a team of museum, garden and nursery practitioners. We hoped that the residency would give us the opportunity to ‘stand aside for a while and leave room for learning’, as Malaguzzi describes above. We hoped to develop a better understanding of what the museum and garden offers to young learners by working in partnership to create opportunities for them to explore our spaces and collections. We were also interested in sharing and developing good practice within each of our settings.

What did we discover about working with young children in the Fitzwilliam Museum and Botanic Garden?

• The project enabled adult and child participants to work together to create knowledge about places, spaces, objects, and collections. Meanings were actively constructed and enacted in a variety of different ways, using bodies, movement, words, and touch.
• As the children developed confidence over the course of the residency, they also demonstrated a growing sense of ownership and belonging within our spaces.
• The case studies revealed that even the very youngest children care deeply about museum and garden collections. There are many examples within the data we collected of children forming deep and personal connections with the objects they encountered. They also demonstrated a sensitivity to issues of display, preservation and conservation.
• Transitional objects such as learning journals, sketchbooks and small world toys enabled children and practitioners to make links and build bridges between the different settings.
• The project gave us the space and time to allow children to respond to their experience in many different ways. However, it also highlighted the many contradictory messages that we give about freedom and control within the museum and garden environment.

How did the project extend and develop professional practice in the different settings?

• The case studies enabled us to identify challenges and contradictions within our practice which might have otherwise gone unnoticed. This highlighted the potential of detailed empirical research of this kind to help practitioners to acknowledge their blind spots.
• The nursery staff took ideas and approaches they observed as part of the residency back to their setting so that other children could experience and benefit from them.
• Although the focus of the project was on a small group of children, the impact on the practitioners and University of Cambridge Museums (UCM) learning programmes promises a wider impact. It will be interesting to reflect on this in the future.
• The writing up process has enabled us to engage in professional dialogues with educators from multiple disciplines and also to understand how our work relates to current academic thinking in this area.
• This project has enabled us to better understand and articulate the potential of collaborative practitioner-led research in informal learning contexts. This represents a significant area for future development.

What next?

This project points the way for the potential of gardens and cultural providers to support the education sector to develop a creative, embedded and community-led approach to professional and curriculum development. Feedback from the nursery practitioners demonstrated how they had been inspired and refreshed by the project. Sabbatical placements are one of the suggestions put forward in a recent government consultation(Department of Education, 2018) about how to improve teachers’ professional career development. We would like to make the case for other practitioners and children to have the opportunity to undertake projects of this kind. We were extremely privileged to have been given the opportunity to work with a small group of children in such an in depth and sustained way. Although we acknowledge the limitations of our project, the residency provided the project team with the opportunity to step back, to observe and to think deeply about our practice.  The process of discussing, reflecting and writing has taken over six months to complete. All members of the project team have been actively involved in commenting on and contributing to the end of project report. This experience will now inform the development our training programmes for practitioners from different settings.

The case studies remind us that young children are capable and intelligent citizens who have important contributions to make to our shared spaces and places. As specialist educators and practitioner researchers we are in a unique position to witness and document the complex, multi-dimensional creative learning that takes place in shared informal learning spaces.  We hope that this project demonstrates that young children have an important contribution to make as citizens now, not just as adults of the future. This extended residency has enabled us to pause and take note of children’s multiple voices and perspectives and in so doing offer enable them to contribute to and develop the ways in which we work with our collections. Young children can and should be given opportunities to take an active and participatory role within our museums and collections.

We have been awarded some funding from the University of Cambridge ESRC (Economic and Social Research Council) Impact Acceleration Account to enable us to develop ideas for future residencies and practitioner-led research at the UCM and other informal learning settings. Over the next few months, we look forward to continuing to discuss and reflect on the residency project as we share our findings with national and international colleagues. Keep an eye out for Nicola at the European Early Childhood Education Research Association Annual Conference in Budapest. Flis and Bronwen will be going to the 10^th International Congress on Education in Botanic Gardens in Warsaw.

You can download the full report here.

If you are interested in finding out more or getting involved with the next stage of the project, please contact Kate Noble.

Early Years Network Meeting at the Early Excellence Centre, Tuesday 6th February 2018

For the first meeting of 2018 we decided to take ourselves out of the museum world for an afternoon and instead, visit the Early Excellence Centre in Canada Water.

 

What is Early Excellence?

We heard from Anna Lacey, Centre Manager, about the role of Early Excellence. The London centre is predominantly a hub for teacher training, as well as a meeting space for teachers and provider of training for parents and carers. Their focus is early years education from birth to children aged 7. The centre is open from 8am to 6pm during the week, as well as every second Saturday and during the school holidays for professionals to come and visit.

Inside the centre is a display of different types of continuous provision, similar to a Nursery classroom setup, as well as meeting rooms and a resource shop. Early Excellence are keen to provide more out-of-the-classroom experiences for early years and are open to posting up museum events on their website and twitter feed – so get in touch!

 

Developmental characteristics of 6 year olds

Anna started out afternoon by examining how children of this age learn and reminding us that children up to the age of six learn very differently: The early years are a time of active learning. These children are physically and neurologically different.

They need opportunities and experiences that:

• are very sensory and exploratory
• provide first hand experience
• provide physical opportunities – learning needs to be big!
• use play as a way of finding out and exploring the world.

 

But what do we mean by play?

Anna defined play as something involving a variety of different ways of learning eg visual, kinaesthetic, auditory.

Effective learning is a combination of:

Direct teaching (eg 1:1, small group learning) + Opportunities for application/play (to process, apply and develop skill).

There are certain things that we cannot learn only through play. Anna gave the example of learning that the letter ‘a’ sound is represented by the letter ‘a’. We would have learnt this from an adult intervening or interrupting us to explain this concept, we would not have naturally learnt this ourselves.

 

The importance of continuous provision

Anna then took us on a tour of their model classroom which was replicating examples of continuous provision – these are little pockets/areas around a group or theme, which children can freely access and play and explore. Anna explained this concept through the example of a supermarket:

Imagine your local supermarket that you always visit. You know it well, you know where to go, where some particular items are stored. You can make a quick decision about what you want and get around the store more quickly. But, if the aisles changes and things are moved around, you might spend three times the normal length of time you spend shopping, you might not be able to find anything from your list, you might not be able to decide what you need and you just grab whatever is closest or easiest. This is what it’s like for children in a classroom. We want them to become real masters of their space, we want them to know where things are stored and how to get to them.

Areas of continuous provision can be ‘enhanced’. This enhancements is the idea of putting a particular display out in an area – an adult’s way of trying to provoke thinking, or a reaction from their group.

Each area of the model classroom links to a particular area of the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) curriculum. As the teacher or activity organiser, it is vital for us to consider what children will naturally want to do.

 

Exploring the areas

Anna then took us on a short tour around some of the areas of continuous provision.

Blocks: This area was organised to demonstrate different types and uses of blocks for different age groups. For children aged under three, simple blocks were available for the purpose of building high, stacking and knocking over. For the Reception class, blocks had numbers on so that children could attempt to count and use the correct number of blocks. And for Key Stage One, this was extended ever further.

This area was made easy for children to use and tidy up with the use of labelling and shadowing. There were also many hidden opportunities eg labelling with fractions rather than numbers.

 

Water play: This area had a wealth of different resources for children to explore the water at their own individual level. The area was made easier for children to use by displaying photographs of each resources on the shelving.

 

Transient art: This area was full of weird and wonderful resources and provided opportunities for enquiry and discussion with children about what the objects might be.

We then spent the remainder of the afternoon exploring the rest of the areas independently and came away with lots of inspiring ideas for our own activities and settings.

If you would like to contact Anna, you can email her at: Anna@earlyexcellence.com

Early Years Network Meeting – Islington Museum 6th June 2017

Islington Museum was delighted to host the June Early Years Network, on what felt like the wettest day of the year.  We were very grateful to all those who swam through the rain to our museum site in Clerkenwell to contribute to a wonderful discussion.

Over a well-deserved tea and cake we chatted about the aims of our Early Years programmes. Having educators from Museum of London, the Geffrye Museum, the Horniman, Fulham Palace and the National Maritime Museum provided a broad spectrum of aims, including:

• Encouraging young families to feel comfortable in the museum,
• Reaching new audiences (particularly local communities),
• Meeting curricular needs,
• Improving our profile among local communities,
• Recognising and promoting young children’s cultural rights,
• Championing object based learning,
• Income generation.

It was interesting to explore how some aims were universal and some were very site specific. At Islington Museum we link into Islington Council’s Strategic Aims around Early Intervention, which means that our programming must be designed to support families in accessing the best possible start in life. Our projects and sessions work to help families to develop key communication, social and motor skills, but also support them to: bond as a family; spend time investigating the world together; connect to their local community; improve their sense of wellbeing and develop the confidence to access the cultural offers on their doorstep. This focus results in much of our programming being geared towards the whole family unit, and as such has led us to think about what topics and messages we feel are appropriate and useful for family programming.

As educators, we discussed how, at our different sites, early years programming fitted into the wider museum programme, particularly during anniversaries, exhibitions or projects perceived as difficult or unsuitable for early years. As an example, Islington is very much a community museum, focusing on the personal histories of our local audiences and the issues that matter to them, and so we currently find ourselves focusing on WWI commemorations, Spanish Civil War banners, local LGBTQ+ heritage and the closure of Holloway prison – all of which provide potentially challenging fodder for Early Years programming. We weren’t alone at Islington in trying to understand how we could approach challenging heritage with under 5’s. There were lots of fascinating examples of other museums tackling challenging histories, such as the Maritime Museum’s very effective inclusion of Under 5’s storytelling during their Slavery Remembrance Day.

While we didn’t settle on any rules for best practice, the discussion did generate some interesting approaches that we as educators seemed to be following when identifying and responding to difficult histories:

• There are some topics that aren’t suitable for under 5’s but these often appear in special, usually ticketed, exhibitions, and feature adult, possibly frightening, content. Museum of London’s Crime Museum was suggested as a good example.
• We should try and engage with difficult histories in our permanent galleries but we need to consider carefully how we scaffold the learning experience. Learning Departments need to provide specific sessions designed to guide the children’s engagement with these histories and to support families in talking about them. We concluded it was useful to keep the following in mind:
• whether our message is developmentally appropriate,
• how we link the topic to the children’s experience and world,
• the language are we using (e.g. if it is historically key but potentially problematic language are we explaining it adequately?)
• which creative learning tools are we using?
• We strongly agreed that personal stories, first person interpretation or immersive, empathy encouraging tools like storytelling, should be put front and centre when tackling more complex issues.
• We discussed the importance of considering the whole family audience. It is possible that this may be the only time these particular adults engage with the museum, and as such, we must think about how we provide for them. The Geffrye suggested some really interesting examples of this, such as: exhibitions with layers of interpretation; developmentally appropriate labels for young children; additional adult labels to ensure carers are aware of the challenging messages in the exhibition and the provision of scaffolding and support to empower carers to discuss the issues with the child.

I was recently surprised, at Islington Museum, when a number of nurseries, children’s centres and families approached me, in order to be involved in our HLF LGBTQ+ heritage project. They turned to us as a safe community space in which to explore crucial messages around respect, tolerance and diverse families. It was a lesson to me not to presume some topics are too nuanced to tackle with under 5’s!

We concluded that as museums we couldn’t and shouldn’t tackle all difficult anniversaries or histories, but that there were some that our museum collections gave us a responsibility to consider. We may not programme under 5’s sessions directly focusing on the slave trade or Holocaust Memorial Day but we can explore the questions of fairness, equality, justice and respect which underpin many of these difficult topics. This allows our under 5’s to experience and explore our museum’s values from their earliest engagement with us.

On a completely different note, I was also asked to share a little about our ACE funded partnership project at Islington Museum. We’re currently working with arts, gallery, museum and healthcare partners to develop an engagement model to support families struggling with mental health and post-natal depression. I gave a sneaky preview of some of the learning from the R&D phase of our project including:

• The benefits and challenges of working with healthcare partners and a Peer Ambassador,
• What we’ve learnt about mental health within families and where we think we, as a museum, can support families on their journey,
• Considerations we’ve taken to ensure staff’s own health and wellbeing,
• Our strategies to recruit participants and ensure their wellbeing throughout the project,
• Our project aims, evaluation and considerations about the future of the programmes.

There is too much to say in a blog but we will be trialing our approach over the summer and sharing our findings at at special sharing events and in publications early next year. If you’d like to find out more do get in touch or come along to one of our events!

Written by Rebecca Campbell-Gay, Islington Museum.

If you’d like to find out more about Islington Museum, contact Rebecca at Rebecca.Campbell-Gay@islington.gov.uk

Early Years Network meeting – Brooklands Museum 23rd March 2017

March’s early years network meeting was hosted at Brooklands Museum in Weybridge, Surrey, and hosted by the Learning & Visitor Services Team comprising Virginia Smith, Head of Learning and Visitor Services, Olivia French, Learning Officer, and Tamsin Birch, Visitor Services Assistant.

Thank you to those who made the trek out of London, who included early years educators from the Museum of London Docklands, The Geffrye Museum, The National Archives and The Postal Museum.

The theme of the session was “A Flying Start: Foundation Stage and Under-5s Sessions with a STEM flavour”.

Tamsin led the session taking attendees through the history and background of Brooklands Museum and responsibilities of the Learning & Visitor Services Team in that context.  These include the Schools and Families programmes.  The remainder of the session focused on Brooklands Museum’s “Mini Aces” monthly sessions for Under 5s, which Tamsin develops and facilitates with the support of other museum staff.  Olivia mostly handles bookings and marketing of this activity, the latter via social media and emails.

Tamsin explained the origins of the Mini Aces programme, which started in January 2016 as part of the Activities Plan for the Aircraft Factory and Race Track Restoration Project, funded by HLF, Surrey County Council and other donors.  Tamsin, Olivia and Virginia talked through the funding and financial logistics of running the sessions.  For instance. the Museum charges £2 per child per session, but adults must also pay for Museum entry, which presents some challenges, as does the location of the Museum and public transport facilities.  Repeat attendees are encouraged to buy annual Museum membership as this is more cost effective.

After the introduction, Tamsin, Olivia and Virginia led a hands-on breakout session giving attendees an opportunity to explore two of the most recent Mini Aces activities delivered, as follows:

1. Brilliant Builders – challenges included hammering “nails” (golf tees) into florist foam blocks and building the tallest/widest tower from paper, plastic cups and bowls.  Children also made tool boxes from card lunch boxes and coloured in printed card tools.  We provided them with thin plastic yellow hard hats sourced cheaply from Amazon.

2. Super Scientists – an “experiment” using pipettes to drop white vinegar (coloured with food colouring) into bicarbonate of soda and watch what happens – it fizzes up!  What happens when you mix yellow and blue vinegar? – It turns green and fizzes up!   We provided children with disposable lab coats and safety goggles so that they looked the part.

After the breakout session, there was a facilitated a group discussion about methods of evaluating sessions involving young children.  For Mini Aces, the Brooklands Museum team begun to use happy/sad emoji-style stickers and asked the children to choose one at the end of each session.  The first time this was done, the “happy” stickers were yellow and the “sad” ones were red. It was noted that several children chose the red stickers and when asked why, it became clear that it was based on their preference for the colour red.  The team has since started using emoji stickers that are the same colour with different outcomes now being recorded.  The other attendees suggested having a range of laminated emojis to choose from (perhaps with Velcro to stick on a board) rather than just the two options.

Victoria told the group about evaluation at the Museum of London, which has taken the form of focus groups.  In shorter sessions, regular attendees have been interviewed whilst children are looked after/entertained by another staff member.  They have also held longer feedback sessions with families, in return for Amazon vouchers given as thanks, that resulted in a more comprehensive feedback opportunity.

At the end of the session, attendees were given an opportunity to look at some of the other materials and objects being used by the team at Brooklands Museum to support their sessions.

Written by Tamsin Birch, Brooklands Museum

How to run a toddler takeover day

Takeover day is an initiative coordinated by Kids in Museums, a charity that exists to help museums, galleries, heritage sites and other cultural venues listen to what children, young people and families have to say. Takeover Day is an annual festival that puts the kids in the driver’s seat, it helps them to develop confidence, and it helps museums to see things from a new perspective. The day is a chance for the children to work towards something meaningful for all involved.

Some venues use the day to try out new things, others use them as a tool to develop links with local schools or community groups. Takeover Day can also be used as an effective evaluation tool.

Back in November last year, I put together a Toddler Takeover Day for Towner Art Gallery in Eastbourne. Why toddlers? Surely that’s a difficult group to get anything meaningful from?

We wanted to work with toddlers and their grown-ups because our Early Years offer had changed significantly since I started working there and we wanted a chance to sense-check what we were doing. Evaluation, check!

We also wanted to try out a few more things to see how our visitors would respond. Trying out something new, double check!

In putting together the day, I learned some valuable lessons:

1. Plan early: The sooner you can get the day in the diary, the sooner you can start planning for it and getting key people on board.
2. Have a clear idea: Planning a nice day with some activities isn’t the point of the day – it’s all about meaningful participation.
3. How are you going to get the information you want? at the end of the day, how will you be able to demonstrate what you learned? How will the day have had value?

 

What did our Toddler Takeover Day look like?

Towner’s Toddler Takeover had three main aspects to it:

1. A room with what was our ‘standard’ set up at the time (sensory play and art materials)
2. A space with messy play (both dry and wet messy play were available)
3. Storytelling in the galleries.

These three things were chosen to allow families to feedback on our current offer and to allow us to see if providing different activities was something our families wanted and if using different spaces at the same time worked.

It was important for us to move into the galleries rather than staying in the educational spaces, we were able to gauge the general public’s reaction to this excitable group using a traditionally very quiet space. We were half expecting a few tuts and mutters, but the response was overwhelmingly “Isn’t it nice to see such young children enjoying the gallery.”

Phew.

We usually have 2 members of staff covering a Tiny Towner session, but for our Toddler Takeover Day we had – 3 members of the Learning team, 2 Gallery assistants (who had an interest in working with Early Years) and 2 volunteers helping out. This increase in staff was to help facilitate the activities in three different spaces and to provide a helpful welcome for our families.

 

What did we learn?

The main thing we learned was that families enjoyed what we offered, we were on the right tracks with our activities, but there was space to grow by incorporating messy play and storytelling into our core Early Years offer. How did we learn this? Through various feedback posters in each room – they looked a bit like this:

Children would be invited to put stickers next to the smiley face if they liked it, and the sad face if they didn’t. This… kind of worked. We noticed in several cases that children just enjoyed sticking the stickers on to the poster.

We also tried the old fashioned way of collecting feedback – by talking to the people who came, and when we couldn’t have a full conversation, we invited them to fill out a quick survey.

Another thing we learned? There is a huge demand for Early Years activities in our local community. How did we learn this? Through the unexpected numbers we had that day. We had around 100 children and parents come to Towner to Takeover. We coped with this the best we could, but it did stretch us all – what a problem to have though!

Anything else? Yes, although we have a long running Early Years group, Tiny Towner, around 60% of the people who came weren’t aware of it. By running a Takeover Day, we were able to highlight our existing offer and encourage new visitors to the gallery.

Our Tiny Towner sessions have benefitted from the learning we received from the Takeover Day. The new activities we trialled are now a core part of our regular sessions, and our audience has been growing steadily since we were taken over by the toddlers.

For more information on how our Early Years offer has changed, since I started at Towner, I blogged about it over here.

Jack Shoulder is the Learning Assistant at Towner Art Gallery in Eastbourne, working across Schools, family and Adult programming and leading on the gallery’s Early Years offer. He also works at the British Museum in their Samsung Digital Discovery Centre. When he isn’t working, Jack regularly blogs about museums on Jack’s Adventures in Museum Land.

 

Early Years Network meeting – Greenwich Heritage Centre 22nd July 2016

 

On 22^nd July the Early Years Network got together for their regular meeting (and a delicious cream tea!) this time hosted by Kayleigh Edun, Learning Officer at Greenwich Heritage Centre.

Part of Royal Greenwich Heritage Trust, Greenwich Heritage Centre is the museum and archive for the Royal Borough of Greenwich. Audiences can learn about the local history of the borough through a changing programme of exhibitions, events and independent research using the archives and local studies library. As well as a school’s programme, family activities exploring the museum and archive collections through craft, storytelling and activities are held regularly on the weekend and school holidays.

The theme of the meeting was to discuss ‘integrating under 5s into regular family programming’ and the Greenwich Heritage Centre was a great place to begin this discussion as they don’t currently run an early year’s specific programme. We began with a tour of the centre which led into a discussion about visitor numbers, which the Heritage Centre is keen to increase. We talked about issues surrounding visibility and how most family programmes seem to gain visibility through word of mouth. We shared our own experiences and recommendations when it comes to increasing visibility, including marketing using mobile apps such as ‘hoop’ or social media so that visitors can shout about their experiences or partnering with other local museums to create a passport or trail to encourage families to a range of sites. We also discussed the value of approaching school teachers to promote for you by running a “what to do in the summer” fair or hosting your own ‘family festival’. As a group we felt there was real value in engaging with potential visitors directly and making that connection face to face.
Kayleigh then introduced us to the family programme at the Greenwich Heritage Centre and gave us a preview of the summer holiday programme, which revolved around local industries and factories – including creating a motorbike board game!

These activities were aimed at children aged 4 and upwards but younger siblings were welcome to join in too. Kayleigh highlighted the importance of making sure the craft activities are flexible and that there are always extra resources available for the young children. A step-by-step guide with pictures (see left image) is provided to support children and adults during the activities which frees up time for the staff to be supporting and interacting instead. The centre has also introduced ‘I Spy’ trail sheets (see right image) for families to encourage them to explore the galleries as well as participating in the crafts, as they take place in a separate learning space.

We discussed ways to ensure that under 5s are included in family activities, including: running crafts and story sessions alongside each other, giving older children a role or ‘helper stickers’ to allow them more responsibility, providing a wide range of differentiated or open-ended activities & including sensory aspects such as messy play or sound boxes.

We ended the meeting sharing our experiences of developing a dedicated early years programme and in particular the challenges faced in selecting the right timings for sessions, especially as families with under 5s are often following a specific routine. The importance of longevity was highlighted and that sticking to timings is key to making families feel safe and secure. Evaluation in the early stages and throughout the development of any programme was a hot topic towards the end of the meeting and we shared our own thoughts on good ways of evaluating, such as giving adults an iPad to complete evaluation but at the same time do a group evaluation with the children.

Early Years Network meeting – October Gallery 26th April 2016

The session held at the October Gallery was led the education manager Georgie Fay and Freelance story teller and Early Years specialist Dani Bradstreet. The focus for the session was to replicate how early years sessions are run within the gallery in order to showcase the ways in which the gallery engage younger audiences to look and respond to the current exhibition as well as allowing the children a chance to be truly creative, using their imaginations and acquiring some new artistic techniques.

The session was attended by numerous early years educators across a wide range of cultural settings including Museum of London Docklands, The Horniman Museum, Islington Museum, Historic Royal Palaces and Royal Museums Greenwich.

Georgie opened the CPD by introducing herself, her role as education manager in the October Gallery and explained the range of educational workshops and events she plans and delivers within the gallery. She then specifically focused on their family programme, detailing how they plan these workshops and her aims and objectives for the programme.  She explained that the focus is to allow children to explore and engage in the art work exhibited in an open ended and child centred way and adults are more ‘facilitators’ than ‘educators’ introducing the children to the art work in a multi sensory way and encouraging the children’s exploration and creativity by providing a range of artistic materials. She then introduced Dani, one of her freelancers who runs some of the family art sessions alongside her to explain how she engages the children in the artwork through a multi sensory story.

Dani encouraged us to sit in a circle, much like what she would do with the children a re-anacted a sensory story that she would do in a family art session. She first of all hooked us into the story by using ‘octobby’ (a purple toy octopus) the October gallery’s mascot, to take us on an adventure to a spring time garden – as inspired by the current Primavera exhibition by the artist Sokari Douglas Camp. She engaged us all by awakening each of our senses – being sprayed by water bottles to replicate rain, having golden fabric thrown over our heads to replicate the morning sun and listening to classical music and sounds of nature to transport us into a garden in the springtime. You could tell how engaged the children would be during this story and how it made the artwork become accessible and understandable for children of such a young age.

The following part of the CPD was led by Georgie again demonstrating a few of the artistic techniques that she has found worked really well with early years children. These were tissue paper painting and embossing. What is paramount is her emphasis on the fact that a lot of the artwork produced was very child orientated and not adult led. Although she showed the children different techniques it was really up to the children what they decided to make and do with the materials provided, there is no set outcome or agenda and most importantly definitely no premade templates or adult made creations for the children to simply complete which ultimately rule out creativity.

The session finished with a discussion around what early years sessions look like in other cultural settings and with a specific focus on recruitment of families to the sessions.

Written by Georgie Fay, Education Manager at the October Gallery

Welcome early years educators!

Hello and welcome to the first ever blog post by the early years network. This is intended to be a space where we can share ideas, thoughts, problems and opinions on working with early years audiences in museums, galleries and other cultural organisations.

If you have any comments or there’s anything you’d like to see or hear about here, get in touch with us at earlyyearsmuseumsnetwork@gmail.com or tweet us @EYMuseumNetwork.

So, let’s get started!