Takeover Day at Leeds City Museum (18th November 2016)
Blenheim Primary School accepted the Takeover Challenge at Leeds City Museum! 29 of their Year 6 children hosted an extra special Tiny Tigers Arts and Crafts morning for children under 5.
On Friday 4th November the pupils came to the museum to plan, resource and organise the activities. This day was enjoyable for all as the children had the opportunity to design their own ID badges for the big day,
design colouring sheets and explore the Life on Earth gallery. They also created welcome banners as well as posters to advertise the event.
The children then thought about the roles they could take over, including reading stories in Life on Earth, leading activities, welcoming guests at the main entrance and collecting feedback from visitors.
On the big day, Friday 18th November, the students arrived with feelings of excitement and anticipation. The first task of the day was to set up the work stations in the Brodrick Hall. These included a wide variety of activities from painting to sculpting. The next job was to set up a welcome desk and assign everyone a job for the day. The students chose roles which they felt their skills were suited to.
Excitement heightened when parents and their children started to arrive and join in the fun. The children were all assigned work stations and were eager to get involved and assist the under 5s. The parents were very impressed with the year 6 students’ attitudes, one parent expressed “they’re all very friendly – it’s lovely!”
One group of children were assigned down in the Life of Earth gallery to assist children with colouring sheets and read them stories.
The children also walked around with their clipboards full of questions for the visitors, staff and volunteers. Two children improvised and asked the parents for what improvements could be made and catered to some of their suggestions such as adding background music. The children gave all the visitors a map of the museum after they left the Tiny Tigers event, encouraging them to explore the rest of the museum.
It was wonderful to have such enthusiastic hosts and leaders who were very welcoming and showed confidence when speaking to visitors, and when talking on the walkie-talkie and microphone!
The event was a huge success with great feedback and response from all involved. One Year 6 said they were ‘amazed they could talk to people’ and one boy’s favourite part was ‘welcoming the people’.
Roll on next year!
Special thanks to:
- The students and staff of Blenheim Primary School
- The enthusiastic visitors on the day
- The Leeds City Museum site team
- Megan and Alice (placement student teachers)
- Nick the photographer
- Takeover Day and Takeover Challenge ambassadors
- Jamie the videographer (on behalf of the Children’s Commissioner Takeover Challenge)
For more information on Take over Day visit: http://www.childrenscommissioner.gov.uk/learn-more/takeover-challenge
