11 Dec 2015
Last month, we celebrated Kids in Museums Takeover Day with a fun-filled event for toddlers, babies and their grown-ups – Toddler Takeover.
We invited under 5’s and their families on to the ship to play, explore and test our under 5’s activities.
We wanted to give local children a meaningful role at Cutty Sark for Kids in Museums Takeover Day, so we invited two year 5 classes from James Wolfe Primary School in Greenwich to run our Toddler Takeover.
We met with the teachers and Year 5 early on to plan the project and from the start, the children took ownership of the event. Each class was split into three teams (activities, evaluation and front of house) and they developed lots of exciting ideas on how to engage our under 5s visitors and their adults. They decided how toddlers should give feedback, developed making activities and trails, and created stories and songs inspired by Cutty Sark. They even created posters to advertise the event.
Year 5 also spent some time in school learning and testing out their ideas on the James Wolfe Nursery classes. They used their understanding of younger year groups to ensure activities and evaluation were appropriate for the audience. As the school is split across two sites, this was a great way to bring the school together, something which senior staff in the school were keen to do.
On the day we welcomed around 250 toddlers and their adults on board. We could not have delivered such a large, successful event without the amazing support from Year 5, who really rose to the challenge. From planning the activities and performing to large audiences of under 5’s, to proudly welcoming the Mayor of Greenwich and Kids in Museum Chair Sandie Dawe to the event and interviewing members of the public, we could not have had a more enthusiastic team.
