The Eton College Natural History Museum hosted its first ever overnight event on Friday. The Family Learning Event, hosted in the Museum for parents and their children (all aged 8 – 11) from the Clewer Cluster group of schools in Windsor, was a huge success. 15 families attended the sleep-over, which featured a variety of activities on the theme of nocturnal animals.
The event started with a live Skype link to a much larger sleep-over at the Science Museum in London, celebrating the fact that museums across Europe were running night-time events over the last weekend.
The Curator explained just what adaptations nocturnal animals have evolved and then the event came to life (literally!) with a night-time safari with bat detectors across Eton’s meadows and along the River Thames. In another activity, participants were able to wear bat headsets (loaned from ZSL) which showed just how bats use echolocation to locate their prey. A trail in a darkened museum using torches to find the nocturnal animals in the Museum finished off the evening’s activities. Families were able to follow the events on the Museum’s new Twitter and facebook pages (links below and via the Museum’s website)!
The Museum has run a number of outreach events in the past year for the Clewer Cluster and in collaboration with the East Berkshire Education Business Partnership (EBeEBP). More are planned.
