Buttons to press, giant jigsaws, sounds of the countryside and excited children running around noisily. It's not some outdoor adventure playground, just the reception class of Huddersfield's Meltham Church of England School in Yorkshire visiting their local museum.
Those of us of a certain age may associate visits to the local museum when we were children with commands to 'be quiet', 'don't touch that' and 'stop running round'. But at Huddersfield's Tolson Museum, it's not just the exhibits which belong to a bygone age, it's those rules too.
It was the memory of those hushed childhood visits which persuaded Kim Strickson from Kirklees Community History Service and Jenny Salton from the Tolson, that a radical change was needed to bring local history and the museum's treasures to life for the very young.
It took six months to plan and build Ronnie the Raven's Puzzlepath, an interactive educational-play experience with sounds, smells, pictures and puzzles for nought to five-year- olds at the museum. A Museum Heritage grant provided 4,000 of investment, and the path opened in May this year.
Touch and play 'We had brainstorming sessions with the local community,' says Kim. 'We had childcare workers, teachers, museum staff, parents and the children themselves. We had a big map of the museum and put flags on it with all the ideas. The biggest message from the children was, they wanted to be able to touch, smell or play on things.
'We have a big Asian population here, so another major feature was to make everything bilingual.'
It takes around an hour and a half to 'do' the path properly. If you're in a school group, taking them off in relays of small groups is recommended, and there are teachers' notes to assist.
After going through a pleasant mock 'tree-lined' entrance with bird song, visitors can begin the search and sort of Ronnie's puzzles. A large wooden picture puzzle sends the children on a 'hunt' to match the pictures with things in the surrounding display cabinets. Another room has them trying to build a local landscape feature, Castle Hill, using a stacking puzzle. A working model of an old wooden water pipe provides buttons to press and sound effects. Even rooms devoted to the history of the local weaving industry are a pure delight for curious toddlers.
Tell me a story
A mock-up of a weaver's cottage is filled with sounds, smells, machinery and even model mice. Materials can be touched and the children can test their own weaving skills using large, colourful ropes.
Even the bird room, which, as in any local museum, was a taxidermists' heaven in its day, has been given modern relevance with a conservation theme, while the children are invited to press buttons and match bird calls with named birds.
Meltham's reception class was the first organised school visit to put Ronnie to the test on a sunny day in June. One feature that really caught their interest was the Victorian children's bedroom, where they could actually sit on a bed and listen to a bedtime story, in either English or Punjabi.
But their energy and enthusiasm was best expressed in the large transport room, which holds full-sized exhibits of every form of travel ever invented. There's Ronnie's 'traffic light puzzles' to solve and plenty of space for tiny legs to run round in.
Class teacher, Carola Alexander said she was very impressed. 'It's been an excellent visit. The children really liked Ronnie the Raven and obviously enjoyed it. From an educational point of view, it's just at the right level.'
The Puzzlepath is already a big hit. Museum attendance figures are currently up around 30 per cent on last year and, says Kim, 'we are getting lots of phone enquiries from outside the area and mums popping in with their toddlers instead of just walking past to the park next door.' NW
l
