Our project to explore young children’s responses to museum collections was devised as part of a long-term partnership between Exeter’s Royal Albert Memorial Museum and Art Gallery (RAMM) and West Exe Children’s Centre. Through the project, we hoped to discover how three- to five-year-olds can appreciate objects and make connections from them.
At various points during RAMM activities, we had observed that children were intrigued by objects but had, understandably, learnt few indicators about the age, material composition, use or value of them. To learn more, we decided to start from objects that the children or their families regarded as ‘valuable’.
The Children’s Centre organised and encouraged families to choose an object of value to them and we ran sessions to find out why these objects were valuable. We laid out a table full of assorted objects (not museum objects) and ran a version of Kim’s game by asking the children to group objects and explain their reasons. Finally, we organised a ‘virtual’ museum day to which parents were invited following some of the ideas that had arisen from earlier sessions. Predictably a ‘valuable object’ to the children was often a stuffed toy which is valid, if a bit repetitive.
CHOICES
The Children’s Centre properly offers the children choices. Therefore, the degree of participation in different activities was dependent on the choices that the children made. Also, at this age, the children cannot be static or talked to in a group for more than about ten minutes. Initially, activities proved more attractive to girls, but when we placed objects on the floor and encouraged the children to walk round, more boys took part. Kim’s game was not so successful because the children could rarely remember the missing objects, perhaps because they were unsure of the names of things. Likewise, an activity on smells worked better with the parents than the children.
There was considerable engagement in various ways – the valued objects initiated discussion in the family and then between the family, child and researcher. Several families commented that the most valuable things were pictures of the children as babies or just the family itself. One particularly revealing object was a scent bottle that had belonged to a grandmother unknown to her family and the bottle and scent were as close as the family could get to her – it was evident that sharing this information with people who were interested in it helped validate both the family experience and the family unit.
ALL SORTS
Children were able to explore the objects in detail and made all sorts of assessments and choices on colour, weight, feel, type of object, personal aesthetics. For example, one boy chose the following objects from the table because they formed a group: a pumpkin, a candle, spoon, torch, gourd pot – well it was near Halloween! Another boy chose a wooden dibber, he held it and immediately grasped it was some kind of tool – when I suggested that it might be used facing downwards, he worked out it was for ‘planting seeds’. However, he did not know wood as a material but quickly began to identify it subsequently.
A frequent set of choices were objects that would fit into one of the boxes on the table. Some choices were made because the objects were ‘smooth’, ‘pretty’, ‘for your hair’, for ‘drinking out of’ and one – a creamy marble – ‘because it is like the moon and I saw the moon at bedtime’.
The Centre staff were positively involved and brought their own objects. They recognised that the children were engaging, communicating, categorising and sorting. They were also experiencing the shared patterns of family life and community. We followed the stories of some of the family objects: the scent bottle, the heirloom baby doll, the invitation to Queen Victoria’s jubilee celebrations and focused the ‘virtual’ museum round them.
We created a number of different environments that engaged staff, children and parents effectively. The key, as we have found in previous projects, is to be flexible in responding to the interests and capabilities of the children. So, the families provided the ‘valued objects’, but the Centre staff followed through some of the themes and the museum researched them and added other museum objects to extend ‘the story’. For example, the baby doll had engaged the children talking about babies – also about how babies are carried. The museum researched this and devised a display on the history of prams and different patterns of baby-carrying in other cultures. This was particularly interesting to the families.
It is very important for children to be able to use all their senses in exploring an object as it is this discovery that ignites their interest. And it is essential to involve parents as they broaden and validate the whole experience. Shared expertise between the partners both enhances the environment and extends the experience. Creating a virtual museum in which the objects were placed in Perspex ‘cases’, focused attention on the objects and gave added ‘value’ because it was visually interesting and fun.
