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The
new Eureka! galleries have been designed to provide interesting
environments for the very youngest children to learn in while they
play.
SoundGarden
is a giant-sized secret space which includes a Leaf Cradle play
area for babies as well as room for Butterfly Painting where children
can finger-paint using touch-screen technology. Here children may
also get their first peek at other non-human living things.
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| You're
never too young to learn |
They
can also don hard hats and venture into the second gallery, Desert
Discovery, to collect and transport soft rocks and boulders and
build their own desert dwellings. There's also a special Oasis with
a giant peek-a-boo palm under which babies can play safely. However,
all of this has been designed with learning in mind. The museum
hopes this 'desert' in the middle of Halifax will provide opportunities
for exploration, observation, problem-solving, prediction, critical
thinking, decision making and discussion.
Penny
Sharman is the Early Years Learning Advisor at Eureka! She says:
"What these new galleries offer is immersive, multi-sensory
spaces. It's just for the under-fives and the great thing about
them is there are no right answers, no definite outcomes. Every
child can approach the galleries the way they want to. It's really
about having fun and using your imagination, and discovering and
exploring what's in there.
"With
early years education it is recognised that children learn through
play. Adults sometimes just dismiss play but in actual fact that's
what children do, it's their work process and they are building
on what they know. Whether it's physical or it's representational,
- if they are drawing a picture, whatever it might be - they are
making sense of the world around them."
Penny
does not believe the experience provided by the new galleries will
substitute for that provided by parents and carers: "Where
the museum galleries are different from what you get at home is
in their scale and their perspective. For example, in our SoundGarden
- obvously you can experience a real garden at home, and that's
vital, but what you get here is like stepping through the pages
of your story book. When children first walk in they look a bit
puzzled and mystified but then they go around the galleries and
work it out for themselves. It's that scale and that sense of place
which they may not have come across before which makes it that little
bit different."
The
museum's Early Years team works closely with parents to give them
more confidence to get the best out of their children's environment.
Penny believes that sometimes "adults have forgotten how to
play."
One
person who hasn't forgotten how to play is Millennium Commissioner
Floella Benjamin. In February 2005 she received a prestigious BAFTA
Lifetime Award for services to children's television. She says:
"I was so pleased by all the affection that all my Playschool
babies showed me that night. There were 800 people cheering and
it's a lovely feeling when you dedicate your life to children."
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| Floella
Benjamin: "If you can look at something through the eyes
of a child it's fantastic." |
Floella
is in no doubt about how Play School, the TV programme with which
she is still famously associated and the experiences to be found
at Eureka! can enrich people's lives: "Children are like little
sheets of blotting paper that absorb and soak up whatever you show
them, and tell them, and do for them, and that's why it's so important
because childhood lasts a lifetime, and whatever you give them at
an early stage will stay with them for ever. Whatever happens they
will always remember those early years, and that's why we have to
nurture those early years and give them the best and Eureka! does
that so well. It's a great place if you're a child, and if you were
starved of all those wonderful experiences when you were a child,
come here because as an adult the child in you comes out and the
excitement you get is great.
"The
whole way it's designed really fires up the imagination and gets
those taste buds tingling with the sense of excitement and that's
what I love about this place. Whoever has designed it has thought
about the pulse. When I did children's programmes I used to think
about the pulse of how you lift children, take them up to a crescendo
and then gently bring them down again, not with a bump, but you
gently bring them down and feel the rhythm and pulse of what you
are doing. How you spoke, you waited for them to discover before
you told them the answer - all those sort of things are so important
to the child's imagination and communication because you allow them
to think. You guide them through. I love communicating with young
children."
Floella
agrees that it is helpful for parents to have support: "When
you expose people to knowledge you musn't do it in a higgledy-piggledy
sort of way, it's got to be a logical way.That's the clever thing
about a museum like this, it's very interactive, very hands-on,
so, anything you do, you are going to get something from it."
"If
you have people who understand what it's like to be a child - most
pre-school children are seeing things for the first time - so you
have to have it at their level, not at an adult level where you've
become jaded and cynical and know what to expect. We have to discover
how it would look through a child's eye."
She
remembers a time when she went to look at some children looking
at a film about rubbish collection which she had made for Playschool
wand found herself learning a valuable lesson: "When I went
to see the children at that school look at that film and heard what
they had to say, I felt ashamed of myself. I said 'Floella, you're
not thinking as a child,. You're not tuned in.' And that was the
time when I discovered how important refuse collection was, how
important every detail of the rubbish collection was...It's all
those questions that we never really think about. If you can look
at something through the eyes of a child it's fantastic."
Floella
believes that investing in children is the best thing a country
can do but this has to be built on solid foundations: "The
big bad wolf could not blow down the house made of bricks because
it was solid, and that's why I tell people I think of life as the
story of the three little pigs."
It
is hoped these new galleries at Eureka! will provide such a foundation
for children in West Yorkshire and beyond.
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