This. This is the definitive response.
Also, we need to enable children to take risks safely otherwise how do they ever learn to function in the world. And we need to make adults who bring children
to our museums be responsible for these children. We aren’t childcare settings.
Amanda Phillipson
Learning & Activities
Hat Works & Bramall Hall
0161 474 2487
From: List for discussion of issues in museum education in the UK.
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Richard Ellam
Sent: 31 August 2018 12:55
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Lego Wall - Safety!
Hi Lettie (and all)
I think you’re over-thinking this, because the problem of children choking on small parts is generally recognised to apply to the under-threes. By the time an average child has reached the age of 36 months they are generally assumed to
have grown out of the habit of putting everything in sight into their mouths. This is why the choking hazard labels you see on toys say ‘unsuitable for children under 3 years of age’.
Lego is a very common plaything, and therefore the vast majority of your visitors will be familiar with it from a home setting. I don’t think you should be setting the wall at such a height that it excludes five-year olds - If you set it
at a height to exclude say 95% of all five-year-olds you’ll exclude a large proportion of six-year-olds, too. The LEGO age guide-lines are pretty meaningless as lots of under sixes live in houses where there’s lots of LEGO because they have older siblings
who play with it, and play with it unsupervised. I’m sure these tots get stuck in to the LEGO box, too even if their big sisters and brothers wish they didn’t! I think these guidelines may have more to do with the ability of children to manipulate small parts
than with safety.
Choking on LEGO isn’t a major problem in society at large: if it were the ‘Sun' and similar ‘newspapers’ would be running noisy campaigns to ban the stuff.
You should, I think make sure that you provide a warning to parents that the lego wall is unsuitable for children under 3 because of the choking hazard presented by the small parts, and also suggest that children under seven should be supervised
while playing with it.
It might also be worth making sure that your front-line staff (and their managers, too) know what to do with a choking child, even if they are not otherwise formally trained as first-aiders.
Science Shows and Hands-On Stuff
Hi All
We are considering installing a Lego wall in our gallery for a new exhibition on Factory-Made Housing. The designers are keen to go with Lego rather than Duplo because its a more appropriate aesthetic choice but I want to make sure we have
risk assessed this exhibit effectively and worried that Lego might present a choking hazard to our younger visitors. The safety measures I have suggested are:
- Wall is at head height of a 6 year old (Lego advised age limit) so that Under 5s cannot reach.
- Safety notice along the lines of ‘please carefully supervise your children whilst playing with this exhibit’.
Does anybody have experience of similar interactive walls with small parts and can advise?
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