Learning Team Update

Hello everyone! Just grabbing a minute in between school visits to give you all a little catch up on some exciting developments in our Learning world at the Museum!

We’ve been working really hard over the past six months to improve the overall standard of our Learning & Education offer at the Museum. We’ve made several changes to our schools offer, including our updated Education Pack and a clearer booking system. We’re really pleased to tell you that our efforts have been recognised and we have been awarded the Learning Outside the Classroom Quality Badge, awarded to us by the Council for Learning Outside the Classroom. This is a nationally recognised seal of approval, that lets teachers know that we provide a high standard of learning experience, in a safe and engaging environment.

There’s another logo you might be seeing around, as we’re also happy to have become one of the Children’s University registered Learning Destinations. Children’s University is a national organisation that encourages children to have learning experiences outside of school hours. Schools sign up to be Children’s University members, and the children within the school are all given a Passport to Learning. This looks just like a passport and the idea is that when children visit one of the CU official Learning Destinations they can do an activity and receive a stamp in their passport. We’ve already had a handful of Children’s University participants collect a stamp during the recent half term holidays, and we hope to welcome many more in the future.

Speaking of half term, we had an incredibly busy week, with lots and lots of families coming in out of the rain to have a look around the Museum and take part in one of our activities. We’re already getting ready for the next school holiday, (my favourite time of the year,) Christmas! I’ve just been cutting out some gorgeous Christmas pictures ready for our Christmas Craft weekends. We couldn’t decide which era we liked best so we’re having a look at Victorian & Wartime Christmas traditions over the first three weekends in December. We’ll have a fun craft activity available each weekend as well as information about how Christmas was celebrated in the past.

Behind the scenes we’re working on some really exciting partnerships with local schools and colleges to develop new education sessions for next year, which we’ll be telling you more about in 2012. We’ve also been working in partnership with Centro, the West Midlands public transport organisation. We’ve come up with an exciting new schools session that looks at Sustainable Transport, in conjunction with the work that Centro do in schools. I’m really excited about this partnership and the opportunities it will present us with for the future.

Finally, don’t forget to have a look at our all new Learning pages on the Museum’s website. We’ve new areas for Schools & Colleges, Families and Other Visitors, as well as creating an activities calendar to keep you updated on all of our upcoming family activities. We’ll be updating this part of the website over the coming months with more photos of what we get up to, news stories and more, so watch this space!

Thanks to everyone for all your continued support, we hope to see many of you over the coming months. Have a wonderful winter!

Naomi