Dear colleagues,
I recently asked for help with ideas for Family Trails. The number of
people asking me feed back the responses far outweighed the information I
received! Here is a collection of the responses I received. I’ve removed
contact details just in case people didn’t want to be inundated.
Regards,
Beverley Ward
Sheffield Galleries and Museums Trust
 Lots of places do tracker packs - V and A, The Natural History Museum, The
National Trust which are interactive trails. You can look on our Trusty
website to see where they are used www.trusty.org although the houses are
closed now for conservation.
Ruth Taylor (Learning Adviser- Interpretation)
The National Trust
 No need to be hi-falutin' - the simplest ones can be the best. One of the
most successful family fun trails I've ever run was at Wigan Pier in 1999
where we ran an 'Out of Time' trail. As a museum of Victorian social
history the Pier was divided into a number of room settings, some opened
up, some with cases. Lots was going (A/V's, actors, special events)on so it
was often difficult to get families to concentrate on the social history
artefacts themselves. I gave each family a sheet and clipboard to write
down the ten objects they could find that were obviously 'out of time'.
These included a 1990's blue asthma inhaler in the Victorian pharmacy, and
a plastic bucket and spade in the seaside area, etc. There was a prize of a
Wigan Pier pen (cries of ooh!)for each completed sheet at the end.
There was a marvellous response to this, lots of positive feedback from
families who worked together to spot items. 'This won't work' was thrown
back at us, by some curators 'they won't understand the difference between
old and new'. On the contrary people were actually focussing on the
artefacts, discussing them and sifting them into age brackets in a very
sophisticated way.
It probably won't suit the new set up at Weston Park, but it's an idea.
Doesn't work with schools either - in Wigan they ran riot from one section
to another to collect clues the fastest!
Best of luck
Brian Holmshaw
Museums Education Consultant
(ex Interpretation Officer, Wigan Pier)
 At the Horniman museum we have some trails that you can down load from
our learning pages - www.horniman.ac.uk/education/sch_museum_trails.cfm or
from the website www.horniman.ac.uk but we re-developing our trails so they
can be used by school groups and families - be more user friendly and
develop critical thinking skills and support discovery based learning and
these trails are traditional. I am very interested to see what you get
back - could you please forward your finding to assist us in our re-
development to - the Tate Britian has a great trail for families - the V&A
has very traditional trails for families and I developed one specifically
for Beaver Scouts at the National Maritime Museum - they should still have
the trail (very basic - 5 and 6 year olds - but they created their own
stickers to wear and the trail as a display board so that when they
presented their trip to their fellow beavers back at their base - this was
part of what they had to do as part of their badge and the distance
resource on their website - www.nmm.ac.uk I would be very interesting to
here back from you - thanks
Nancy
Horniman Museum
 I offer a Tots Trail - this is a shoe bag with six objects in, families
collect them and then try and find the objects around the museum. Objects
include a soft toy animal (we have lots of stuffed animals), a bone, roman
coins, picture - you get the idea. On the label with give the parents ideas
of where they will find the objects and the sort of questions to ask.
Good luck
Margaret
 We have some non-traditional schools trails here at Thinktank. I know
you're looking for family trails but they might give you some ideas.Go to:
http://www.thinktank.ac/education/act_trials.htm
Elee Kirk
Education Officer
hinktank, Birmingham's science museum
 My partner and I created an activity trial for school groups for Plymouth
Museum and Art Gallery's new Natural History Museum. I think they're at the
stage of trialling it with groups. Might be worth giving them a call?
Jo Graham
Learning Unlimited
Ringwood
Hants
 Milestones (Hampshire's living history museum www.milestones-museum.com)
has a number of "I Spy" trails (some for schools, some for families) which
are very popular. If you'd like me to send you some examples of activity
sheets from Milestones, please let me know your address.
Ruth Kerr
Education Officer - Social History
Willis Museum, Market Place, Basingstoke
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