Funky headgear, family fun and trainee primary school teachers!

In the last few weeks we have been lucky enough to have two sets of trainee primary school teachers placed with us in the education department from Oxford Brookes.  In their third year of doing a BA Hons in Primary Education, the students have been participating in a module called 'Learning Beyond the Classroom'.  As the Primary School Education Officer I mentor them during their placement and model the learning opportunties available for pupils within a museum context.

This placement happens every year and this time I decided to get both sets of students involved in planning family activities.  Many families visit the Pitt Rivers as they want to support learning which is happening at school and as they want a stimulating learning experience.  This experience was certainly given to families at the Amazing Armour Pitt stop on 7th October! James and Rachael created a fabulous trail where families had to track down armour made from amazing materials (crocodile skin, coconut-tree fibre, fish scales, string and much more!).  Participants raved about the trail including a special needs teacher and a primary school teacher all the way from California! Families were also given the chance to try on armour as well as make their own version of a puffer fish helmet.

Planning a family activity on Amazing Armour! © Pitt Rivers Museum

Puffer fish chatting © Pitt Rivers Museum

The second set of students looked at how they could adapt the armour trail designed for a family audience to suit the needs of a primary school audience.   They could draw on their knowledge of the primary curriculum to help create a stimulating self-guided trail. They also worked alongside the new Families and Communities Education Officer, Beth McDougall, to plan family activities for the October half-term on Bats, Cats, Witches and Charms.  The students applied their knowledge and understanding of how learning occurs to craft suitable activities.

Desiging an Armour and Defence Trail © Pitt Rivers Museum

During their placement students also observed a wide range of sesions which are delivered by the education team: a bespoke KS1 Materials session themed round the 'Three Little Pigs', an Arts Award session for Iffley Academy and an extended talk for a visiting Higher Education group. They seemed to enjoy the diversity of sessions and also got stuck in with delivery to primary school kids (teachers will be teachers!)

It is great to work in partnership with Oxford Brookes to help deliver their BA in Primary Education and we look forward to getting another excellent cohort of students next year!  In January we will be showcasing how pupils learn from objects to PGCE students from Oxford Brookes.  I'll keep you posted!

Becca McVean
Education Officer (Primary)

Arctic Explorer visits the Pitt Rivers Museum

For our monthly Pitt Stop activities for families we invited along an artist who has just come back from a trip around the Arctic. This special Arctic Explorer is artist Jennifer Crouch who has spent the last couple of months travelling around the Arctic on a ship. Her trip was part of The Arctic Circle who run an expeditionary residency program for artists and scientists. The project that Jennifer was involved with is called Making in Transit and there are a number of events going on. She came to the Museum to share her experience of her visit and what she did during her time there.

One of the things that inspired Jennifer to go on the trip in the first place was seeing some Inuit carved maps that were carved from ivory. During her trip Jennifer carved some of her own maps of the places she visited, primarily Svalbard (Norway).

Jennifer showing families her carved wooden maps © Pitt Rivers Museum

For the workshop at the Pitt Rivers, Jennifer brought along a making activity where families could carve maps into sandstone. Sandstone is quite a soft stone so you can slowly carve it with clay tools, and it has a really smooth texture which makes the carving very therapeutic. Jennifer explained to families how she carved her maps whilst in the Arctic, pointing out how she would have to pick up all the wood shavings from the floor otherwise they would pollute the landscape. The reason for this being that the Arctic is so cold so things take hundreds of years to rot down. Families had great fun carving their own maps of Svalbard looking at maps that Jennifer had on display.

Carly Smith-Huggins
Families Education Officer

Families carving soapstone maps © Pitt Rivers Museum

Families carving  soapstone maps © Pitt Rivers Museum

Families carving soapstone maps © Pitt Rivers Museum

Attack or Defence: Half-Term Family Activities

This February half term we ran three days of family activities on the theme of attack and defence. We were looking at how people attack and hunt as well as how they protect themselves. The second floor of the Museum is filled with hundreds of examples of weapons and armour. For the event we were looking at ways in which humans attack and defend themselves.

One of the activities was focused on the Japanese Samurai and families could make a Samurai mempo, which is a mask used to fully or partially cover the face. In the museum we have some fantastic examples of Samurai and you can look closely at the details of their armour. Samurai wore protective mempo on their faces, which sometimes featured a big moustache to scare opponents! The moustache was used to frighten the enemy as it was quite difficult for a man to grow a moustache that big, especially a young warrior who might have found it hard to grow facial hair at all. The moustache showed your opponent that you were strong, mature and fierce.

Japanese Samurai armour 1901.46.1.1
© Pitt Rivers Museum

Some of the great Samurai mempos made during half term
© Pitt Rivers Museum

Why don't you come along and check out the Japanese samurai armour on the Upper Gallery of the Pitt Rivers Museum?

Carly Smith-Huggins
Families Education Officer

Rockin' Reindeer Christmas Trail

This Christmas we're testing your reindeer spotting skills! Can you spot all the reindeer in the Museum with our festive Rockin' Reindeer Trail? The trail is based across both the Pitt Rivers Museum and the Oxford University Museum of Natural History and will highlight lots of reindeer related objects in the collections.

Can you spot all 10 reindeer across the Museums? © Pitt Rivers Museum

Here's a sneak peek of one of the objects featured in the trail: 

Reindeer skin knickers, Siberia 1915.50.111 © Pitt Rivers Museum

These knickers would have been worn by people who lived in cold places like Siberia in Russia. They are made from reindeer skin and the fur is on the inside to keep the person wearing them warm and cosy, which was essential as temperatures can drop to -50 c. These knickers would have been worn by a woman with leggings and thigh high boots. They are not often worn today because the skills of making them lie with the older generation. Also most Inuit and Evenki peoples living in Alaska and northern Russia live in heated homes so there isn't such a need to wear them. Some people still wear them but on rare occasions such as when hunting. 

Come and take a closer look at these reindeer skin knickers in the Museum and discover more reindeer objects that we have on display. The trail runs from Saturday 19th December until Sunday 3rd January during opening hours. 

Carly Smith-Huggins, Families Education Officer

Pop-up Pitt Rivers

The Pitt Rivers outreach programme is part of the Need / Make / Use project. Between 2013 and 2017 we are taking the Pitt-Rivers ‘experience’ to events, fetes and festivals in and around Oxfordshire. Our aim is to reach out to communities that may not have had the opportunity to visit the Museum, so they can engage with the collections in new ways through handling museum objects, craft activities and workshops.

So far in 2015 we’ve been lucky enough to attend Abingdon Fun in the Park in the Abbey Grounds and Florence Park Festival in June and Salisbury’s Festival of Archaeology in July.

Pitt Rivers pop-up tent at Abingdon's Fun in the Park in June © Pitt Rivers Museum

Inside our beautifully decorated tent we have a selection of intriguing museum handling objects on display from around the world to spark people’s curiosity and encourage conversation. The great thing about museum handling objects is that people can pick them up, feel the materials and even give them a sniff!

One of our favourite ‘smelling’ objects is this Kenyan milk gourd, made from a calabash (a type of vegetable), which has been cleaned and dried in the sun until it becomes hard and watertight. Its distinctive smell comes from a blend of milk, cows blood and ash, providing the local Maasai herdsmen with their staple food and all their protein and caloric needs in a convenient portable ‘lunchbox’. These gourds were treasured, mended when broken and used for many years.

Kenyan Maasai gourd from the education handling collection © Pitt Rivers Museum

As always our pop-up tent also features a selection of free family friendly craft activities relating to the museum’s collections and some of the handling objects on display. This summer we’ve had fun making porcupine fish helmets, fish scale breastplates, mini Zulu shields, feather headdresses, drum shakers and more!

 Porcupine fish helmet activity & replica porcupine
fish helmet from the education handling collection. © Pitt Rivers Museum

At Salisbury Festival of archaeology, emulating a fish-scale
breastplate from Sarawak © Pitt Rivers Museum

Children wearing their porcupine fish helmets, 
and pretending to be one! © Pitt Rivers Museum

This August, look out for our tent in Witney’s Marriotts Walk shopping centre (Wed 19th) and the next Oxfordshire Play Day event in Wallingford (Wednesday 12th)!

Pitt Stop: Round, Round, Get Around

On the first Saturday of the month we run Pitt Stops at the Pitt Rivers Museum. Pitt Stops are afternoon drop-in family workshops that everyone is welcome to attend, and each month we explore a different theme linked to the collections. In October we looked at travel and transport with our exciting workshop, Round, Round, Get Around. One hundred children attended the workshop with their parents and carers between 1-4pm. They had a choice of making a car, a plane, or a boat. The car proved to be the most popular activity, and for this children could make a small model car that was powered by a balloon! It was a great activity that encouraged children to use lots of skills including thinking and planning as well as physical making and construction. When they had finished making their balloon-powered car they could then test it out on the racetrack that I had set up in the museum.

Racing balloon-powered cars! © Pitt Rivers Museum



Salama boat model! © Pitt Rivers Museum

The Pitt Rivers Museum has lots of boats, which I discovered from running an under 5s event called Row, Row, Row Your Boat. One of the best boats is the Salama boat, which is used for fishing in shallow waters. The boat has an outrigger sticking out of the side which helps it to float as it does not have a keel underneath to steady it like many other boats.  Children also had the opportunity to make a model Salama boat to take home with them. One of the great things about the balcony location of the activity is that if you look above you there is a large Salama boat hanging from the ceiling, so children can see the ‘real thing’ they are trying to replicate.

It is a good idea to have a contrast of modes of transport as it encourages children to think about the different ways in which people have travelled in the past, and how we ourselves travel today. They also have a chance to think about why people use these modes of transport in certain environments.

 Recycled aeroplane PRM 1998.9.7 © Pitt Rivers Museum

Children could also have a go at making a paper aeroplane model and they could pretend to fly on the Pitt Rivers Airline using the runway I set up in the museum. Children enjoyed creating the planes and seeing if they could make them fly.

This activity was fun and interactive and families enjoyed being able to design something based on the Museum's collections. The collections include a range of transport models made from metal cans and containers, like this aeroplane.

You can hear more about the aeroplane and how it was made in a refugee camp in Uganda, here:



I am looking forward to our next Pitt Stop on Saturday 6th December running between 1-4pm where we will be making shiny Christmas coins to get into the festive mood.  It is called Have yourself a shiny little Christmas and we will be discovering beautiful things made from metal.  Looking forward to seeing you all there!

Carly Smith-Huggins
Family Education Officer

Bags and bags of fun

Here is our intern Hannah reporting on family backpack activities run every Tuesday over the summer between 2-4pm:

"Well what a busy summer it was handing out backpacks to the public! Lucky visitors had the chance to borrow a backpack and explore the collections in the Pitt Rivers and Oxford University Museum of Natural History.

Visitors would pick which collection they would like to explore and then take their bag around the Museum to discover many wonderful objects. In the Pitt Rivers the bags were based on our Egypt collection. You could dress up to look like the god Horus or even wrap each other up like our mummy!

The Oxford University Museum of Natural History either had a bag all about dinosaurs (always very popular!) or a bag to explore all things creepy crawly. But if you were going to be a true explorer you of course needed to take your very own explorer hat to complete the look!

Modelling Explorer Hats © Pitt Rivers Museum

My task was to make sure that all our bags came back, were checked and recorded so they could be sent off again. This was often a rather lively task and we would have a queue of visitors eager to get going to explore the Museum with a bag. We had to try our best to stay calm and go as quickly as possible. We worked out that over 50 bags went out each time!

Handing Out Backpacks© Pitt Rivers Museum 

 

It was really lovely to see so many happy faces taking their bags around the Museum and I think the parents really loved having an extra thing to help engage their children with the collections. We received great feedback about how wonderful it was for the children and that it was suitable for all ages- even for little ones that could just sit down calmly and have a play".