Nursery World - Learning & Development: Museums

The EYFS served as a guide for developing museum visits for under-fives visits. Ruth Gillan tells how.

Do very young children and museums really mix? Answers emerging from a recent partnership initiative in Suffolk suggest they can - and that when they do, the experience can be rewarding, joyful and beneficial for all.

Under-fives, and certainly the under-fours and threes, tend to be something of a neglected audience group, particularly in smaller museums. Most of what is traditionally on offer relates to their school-age brothers and sisters.

The move to develop something more specific for an early years audience began in the small, volunteer-run Lowestoft Maritime Museum, in one of the county's more deprived areas. Working with an education consultant and two early years practitioners, the museum created a sailor's sack of objects and activities inspired by the town's seafaring heritage. This was for pre-schools and nurseries to borrow and use in their settings. Everything in this unique learning resource was linked to the EYFS framework. The take-up of this pilot was good and proved easy for the museum to manage and sustain.

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