Not another blog…

My twin girls enjoying Maisy goes to the Museum by Lucy Cousins

Not another blog... That’s what I imagine everyone saying when they see that I’ve decided to write a blog. This is my first but there are plenty out there, right? I’ve been considering writing a blog for quite a while but the question was always “but about what?” There are plenty of blogs about parenting, museums, museums and parenting, twins, education in museums, and whilst I read some of them it’s hard to find something new and really different.

It was whilst reading a bedtime story with my twin girls (2 and 8 months) that I suddenly had a realisation. The two things that I really enjoy in this world are books (but specifically children’s literature) and museums. I was reading Lucy Cousins' “A Maisy First Experience Book” for under 5s, “Maisy goes to the Museum”. I’ve read it many times before with the girls’ older brother and now with them but I was thinking this is an interesting museum, so much to see and do, the author has put together a number of museum experiences into one book and it seems to work, I wonder which museums she visited to inspire this story. And that was it, lightbulb moment – ping! Write a blog about museums in children’s literature! Of course!!

So here we are. I’ll talk about Maisy goes to the Museum in my next blog, but for now I want to tell you what qualifies me to write about this subject. Not that I particularly need to justify myself, but I thought it might work as an introduction.

Whilst at university I studied Teaching Studies with English Language and Linguistics, but I was able to choose Children’s Literature as a module. I enjoyed that module more than any other I think. I was able to read books, review and comment on them for pleasure as well as study. My particular passion was poetry and nursery rhymes, and I still have a dream to put together a book of as many versions of nursery rhymes and songs as possible, looking at regional variations, etc. But that might still be a while away.

Having three children over the last 8 years and working full time has called a halt to reading for pleasure, but I think I’m at a point in my life when reading children’s literature might not be too taxing, might be helpful for me to understand what my children might want to read and could actually help my career as a freelance heritage/cultural educator.

Whilst working at Chelmsford Museum as the education officer there, after some inspiration from a GEM (Group for Education in Museums) conference workshop on under 5s in museums, I decided to put together an under 5s session once a month. I worked in partnership with education officers from Epping Forest Museum and the Museum of Harlow, to develop sessions based on nursery rhymes and linked with an object in the Museum collection. For example Hickory, Dickory, Dock was paired with a grandfather clock at Chelmsford Museum. We also linked a story book and a craft activity, tried to ensure that activities were short and sweet, and we tried to build in opportunity to move around the museum as part of the session. This was really good for Chelmsford where one of my tasks was to introduce a new audience to the museum. We would get under 5s into the museum but mainly to visit the toilet as they were nicer than the ones in the park, then they would visit the stuffed bear in the entrance hall and the bees upstairs (there was a live beehive encased in Perspex). The Friday 5s sessions, as I called them, came to be my favourite session of the month, watching these little ones with their carers discover something new about the museum and join in with familiar songs. We saw children develop a real fondness for the museum and some of the parents volunteered their time after their children had gone on to school to keep Friday 5s going. We got funding to work with a Children’s Centre to pay for a coach to bring families over from a more deprived part of the town (it’s now a city!) because buses didn’t have a direct route to us and we shared Friday 5s with a brand new audience for a number of weeks then had a celebration at the end. We felt we were developing parenting skills, showing adults how to help their little ones cut and stick, modelling how to interact for some parents who possibly had not taken the time and didn’t really know how to interact with their children. The nursery rhymes and stories were integral as they brought a familiarity that the new setting didn’t have, it helped them feel at home. And that’s the power of a story book – that familiarity you get from children’s stories much of the time.

Anyway, that’s probably about enough from me right now. In future we’ll explore stories that include museums and we can explore how stories can be used in museums too.

Thanks for reading!