Bit of a weird one...what are the best sort of resources for your DC when you visit museums?

[FortunesFave]

I mean resources like fun work sheets...not so much the more interactive things like dressing up or science experiments.

Reason is that I'm trying to help a very tiny museum who have no budget and need to create some kind of fun worksheet they can hand out to visiting children.

Treasure hunt type stuff. Can I tap into the hive mind of MN and ask what kind of things like this your children have enjoyed in the past?

Mine really enjoyed a "find the Lego person in each cabinet" one we did some years ago!

My kids also enjoyed that sort of thing, find the Lego person, or in a NT house we went to, there was a toy mouse hidden in each room (which tied in with a story about the house) and they had to find it. It kept them entertained whilst the adults heard about the history of the house.

Mine always liked the scavenger hunt type where you find the first letter of a series of things in the exhibits to find an answer which leads to a small prize (haribo etc)

I was just about to say the hunt a lego person ones are best - mine don't really want to do anything with a worksheet involved - too much like school perhaps? Also with Covid you probably don't want to handing anything out like paper & pencils I would assume?

Mine like to find letters that lead to a word etc too. You can have different levels of this suitable for different age groups too which is good for those of us with teens and little ones.

London Transport Museum... Had to collect various stamps on a card (think there was a little prize at the end).

Cards that you stamp or tick are a lot easier than sheets of paper that you have to write on. So they can do it independently.

We like the treasure hunt type things, even the very simple find the yellow/green/orange footprints in the dinosaur area of the NHM is always a hit no matter how often my five year old does it.

Agree that a trail of some kind is good. Because I'm a pompous arse, I prefer it to be related to the stuff in the museum, rather than find the Lego man. questions like "what creature is found in xyz painting" or "how many dragons are carved on the ceiling" DC to engage with the collection a bit more.

I have to say I'm not a fan. If you do them, please do them by age or make them easy. There is nothing worse than trying to help small children work out anagrams and things and then getting upset and you having to do all the hard work and instead of giving them something to do just adds to the parenting load. I agree I've preferred the find the Lego figure for that reason rather than look for the answers to a quiz then use the first letter of each answer Yadda Yadda, kill me now. I still think finding Lego figures or whatever detracts from the actual exhibits though. An app where you take a photo at certain check points would be better than faffing with worksheets. The virtual gruffalo one at Delamere years ago was really good. Something like that I'd enjoy.

Screw me too. I've discussed it with the museum and the point of me doing this is to help the children engage more with the exhibits.

I don't see the point of finding a lego figure in a museum...they could be anywhere running round looking for lego. Not the museum. They wouldn't look at the objects if all they were thinking about was a lego figure surely.

Mine usually lose interest in the I-Spy type trails, but there was a brilliant trail at York Castle museum in Feb where you had to solve a catnapping crime by looking for different clues through the museum. It was really interesting. We did it with a 5, 7 and 10 yo and they all loved it.
As another pompous arse I’d say the important bit is linking whatever activity your offering properly to the museum exhibits. I always like it when there’s a real effort to link the children’s activities to the exhibits. Our absolute favourites are great themed role play spaces, but that can be very hard to replicate without a good budget and/or a good selection of skilled volunteers.

Medianoche that sounds great! The museum is an old prison basically...but also a courthouse so there'd be good opportunity to use stories related to that!

We took the kids to the Pitt Rivers Museum a few years ago and they dished out torches so the kids could explore the darker corners of the museum. That was a big hit but Pitt Rivers is pretty special anyway!

Another big hit was the Stromness Museum in Orkney (a small local museum) that had a box of postcards of the exhibits and the DC got to choose a few and then had to find them. Great fun and works best in a smaller museum (we did something similar in the Lourve, not such a success!). They had art tables as well so the kids could draw and handle some of the less valuable exhibits.

Also in Stromness at the Pier Arts Centre they have scavenger hunts to find pictures and draw your own version. Works well at all ages works well somewhere small.

I'm not keen on the 'find a teddy bear' type of activities, they can work for very small children but for older kids a scavenger hunt where it encourages them to actually look at the exhibits are the best. Including some cool pieces of information so the kids can tell the parents something is also good (the scavenger hunt books by Catherine Aragon are good for those types of details, or Atlas Obscura).

I think small museums can do this kind of thing best, you can make it a bit quirky and interesting in a way that is not possible on a large scale.

decides to go to York Castle this summer

@FortunesFave

Medianoche that sounds great! The museum is an old prison basically...but also a courthouse so there'd be good opportunity to use stories related to that!

So, you can lock the children in the cells while the parents go for a nice child free coffee?

At Leeds Castle there are a selection of laminated sheets for each room and they are themed by age, so for instance my dd loved the 'finding animals' one when she was 3, it showed the animals in each room, for instance in paintings or carvings and she had to find them. Because there were a range, it kept her busy on each visit

We love worksheets. Something age appropriate related to the collection/topic. So for easier type questions - find the pink vase - how many flowers does it have on it. More difficult ones....what is the pink flower vase made from etc....
Intelligent questions that help the kids understand what they are seeing. Not to hard that they can't do it though.

What about a dressing up section with clothes appropriate for the venue? The SS Great Britain in Bristol and the Fashion Museum in Bath both have these. They also do dress up for the adults. They're always busy with families taking dress up selfies.

A museum local to us used to do a different themed trail every school holiday. Say it was Vikings, there'd be a sheet the dc would have with a drawing of a Viking ship with various facts etc. Then they'd have to spot the little paper viking crew members in various displays around the Museum which would be next to an artefact that was relevant to the themes/fact sheet. If they spotted all the things they were supposed to they got a little prize at the end.

They would also have hands on activities around the same theme. Most memorable was the time we made a Saxon trollen wheel out of a beer mat!

DS always liked the ones where you get a stamp for reading the information.

My DDs never really got on with worksheet type things, though a 'find the animal' one would have been a hit with DD2.

What engaged them most was definitely the personal audio tours aimed at children. It helped keep them focussed and they didn't have to read the info.

Dressing up options are great too (but imagine that’s ruled out by COVID risk assessments just now). The mention of SS Great Britain has reminded me how effective a simple, cheap role play idea can be - they have mini brooms and buckets of water and the children are allowed to scrub the decks. My kids have talked about that for years!

My 6 year old loves a worksheet! His ideal would be one where you have an overall puzzle to solve- so you have a "clue" in each room e.g what colour are the chairs in this room, how many dogs in the picture etc and then by finding all.the answers you can solve the overall mystery e.g who.burgled the mansion or ate all the chocolate or whatever.

Age appropriate.
Maybe find something in the displays for younger ones.
For older ones something where they have to think, investigate or learn something.
I also have a dyslexic /asd dc so something that dc didn't need to write on (maybe tick box/shade the correct answer). Dc would also need things to be set out in an easy read format.
My youngest two are very competitive and loved a prize at the end (a pencil, certificate or bookmark). Be careful with food though as I have one with allergies we've often been given a prize that dc can't eat and there's been no alternative.