I love working with under fives and their
families. I enjoy that everything is so new to them: you can watch new discoveries in the process
of being made. They are often completely
unguarded about showing how they feel.
It is also a lovely time to work with their parents too – they are
enjoying firsts with their children and their enjoyment is also unusually
visible in trusted settings. So working
with this audience placed me firmly in my comfort zone.
As a Trainee you are being closely observed
throughout the process and this is a little nerve wracking. The setting is still new and the open drop-in
nature of the event is a little different to my previous experiences of working
with families, so I certainly was not complacent. I was also conscious that the Ashmolean Museum has been long listed for the Kids in Museums Family Friendly Award. At the Ashmolean the group is open to all
under fives from tiny babies and at this time of year it extends to visiting
children who are over five attending with younger siblings. All need to be able to be involved at their
own level. Being a parent too, I also
had ambitions to ensure parents made discoveries and never felt bored. Finally,
it was based on the theme of archaeology.
This is a wonderful theme for us at the Ashmolean with so many fantastic
objects and stories from archaeology to share, but would I be able to enthuse young
children and their families about that?
How many of my audience could even say “archaeologist”? This event linked in to the national Festival of Archaeology
Fortunately for me there is a standing format
for the under fives Big Dig event – three paddling pools each one full of a
different type of materials – sand in one, packaging peanuts in another and
shredded paper in a third. In each pool
a range of items. From here the
development of the session was up to me.
I know how much young children love animals and familiar plastic toy
animals went in. The resulting mix
included a range of safe non-choking hazard, robust objects of a variety of
sizes, colours, textures and shapes wooden
pots, metal boxes pseudo objects such as a plastic sword next to real antler
etc. At tables we put paper and coloured
pencils should any one wish to draw what they found. We needed a second activity and for this I
chose making clay animals like those in the Aegean World Gallery.
Against one wall we put down mats and on
these large trays and paint brushes – this created a child height lab for
investigating, cleaning and sorting finds just like a real archaeologist. Setting up the room I admired how neat and
tidy it was. I took a photograph. It did
not look like that by the end of the session. The children had a lot of fun!
What surprised me most was that children
happily put their finds into the shared lab area. There was no snatching or not sharing and a
real happiness in discovering together.
No one was left out. Babies
tended to stay digging and not move from there, the older children gravitated
between dig and lab space and there were many interesting discussions between
the older children – they were in a real state of flow – fully engaged
throughout. One of them announced to me early on “I want to be an
archaeologist”. I was happy to tell him he had come to the right place. Another told me he had found an antler –
we had borrowed this from our Anglo Saxon handling collection and yes it was an antler. “But how do you know its an antler?” I
asked. He was a little annoyed with the
question but he patiently explained “I know it is an antler because I have seen
a Reindeer Antler and this one is a lot like it” Good answer. I told him that is just what an archaeologist
does, they figure out what they have found based on what they know of similar
items. The ambition to
help under-fives celebrate archaeology was going very well indeed.
In the next room there was an opportunity to
make with clay using cutters. A family with a baby sat him on the table where
he played with the plastic shapes enjoying shape and texture while his sister
experimented with what happens when you pour water on clay. “Ugh! Its slimy!”
she said. Around the room a lot of people were finding out about the properties
of clay, how to create texture with tools and what they did or did not
like. Images of clay bulls from our
collection were on the table. “Mine is much better than that one” one of the
children told me. “I’ve made three hedgehogs” said another “They are a family”
Next it was time for the optional tour. Most of the room emptied to follow me up to
the Aegean World Gallery where we took a
look at the picture of Arthur Evans and saw some of his amazing discoveries. We
used the song “If you’re happy finding treasure clap your hands” to process
that we too had made discoveries downstairs and like him we had to sort them
and clean them. Together we looked at
some of the objects he might have needed on a dig – the trowel, his sketchbook,
tin mug and plate for camping out .
The children liked taking things out of the
bag and loved the throne room and wall art – so much shape and colour. We moved in to the Near East gallery where we
toured past the Archaeological Tell model and sang “One little finger” all
about pointing – adapting it to point at objects in the gallery. We also sang head shoulders knees and toes next to the skeleton before a
lucky dip of the foam skeleton jigsaw.
The eldest to the youngest all enjoyed this and parent feedback at the
end of the session was particularly positive.
I can’t wait to do the next one, but I also
like the idea of a more horrible histories approach to the Knossos archaeology
with an 8+ audience . . . The image of
the bull which inspired our clay creations would be familiar to some of the
parents from the Theseus and the Minotaur Myth.
It appears frequently in the Aegean World Gallery. This tells the story of archaeologist and
former curator of the Ashmolean, Arthur Evans.
He was inspired by the ancient story of the Minotaur to look for the
real Knossos Palace and discovering it.
Thinking about my audience, decided they
were a little too young for the horrible histories end of that, I
decided to focus on the throne room items, wall art and clay cow models rather
than child eating minotaur or Labyrinth rescue.
Later on talking with one of the parents
about that decision, he thought his three year old would love the story since
it has scary bad guy and a daring rescue.
We discussed just how grim Grimm’s fairy tales had been – would any
parent share an unexpurgated version now?
The conversation ended with him asking more about the gallery and
deciding to come back to see it again with his family. I was also happy to tell him I had read a
reasonably child friendly version published by barefoot books. I include this moment because I think its a
really undervalued aspect of under fives learning in museums in general. Parents crystalise approaches to creative
parenting, you will often hear them say “we could do this at home” and it gives
them time consider their values, bond with their children and play together when they attend events
like these. It’s not just children who are learning.
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