Playful Museums – From Me to You
100 objects for 100 years
17th June 2021
Ballycastle Museum Consultation
28th July 2021Playful Museums – From Me to You
Project Attributes
Project:
Owner:
Date:
5th July 2021
‘From me to you,’ explores the journey of one little Bear’s postcard to his Granda Bear.
2021 Project
‘From me to you,’ explores the journey of one little Bear’s postcard though time on the various delivery methods (horse and mail carriage, pigeon post, train, mail plane and delivery van) to it’s final delivery to his Granda Bear.
Children were invited to join the Museum Services on a postcard’s journey during our Playful Museum’s week running from Monday 15th – Saturday 20th February 2021. Inspired by postcards within our five museum collections, as well as the great work of all our postal workers, the event was open to all children aged 1-5 years. It ran virtually with a short animation, online instruction videos, postal and downloadable resource packs.
Each day there was a craft instruction videos posted on the Ballymoney Museum Facebook Page to help the child put together their crafts and games for the week. Their crafts were, Monday-Bear Mail hats and post-box, Tuesday- Mail bags with copies of postcards from the collection, Wednesday-postcards, Thursday- Stamps, Friday-mail plane and Saturday- matching and sequencing games.
Within each pack, children were given the resources to create their crafts as well as colouring pages, an evaluation sheet, stamped address envelope and stickers.
A major part of this project was around the creation of the child’s own portrait stamp and postcards. A stamped address envelope was provided in the resource pack for the artwork to be returned to the Museum. On return of their artwork each child was rewarded with a certificate to thank them for all their hard work and for taking part in this year’s project.
The returned artwork is now featured in an exhibition both online and in venue in Ballymoney Museum.
The returned postcards were delivered to Clanmill houses within the Borough as a way of connecting generations and sharing creativity. Some of the residents have responded to the children with their own beautiful postcards and short messages.
Skills Development
The under 5s who participated in our activity showed initiative, imagination and made their own decisions in terms of how to create their postcards and stamps. This targeted their personal, social and emotional development as well as The Arts.
As they worked with a range of tools, equipment and materials to create all their artwork this covered their physical development and movement as well as the Arts.
We provided writing ideas for their postcards to help with language development as they practice writing, scribbling and mark making as a way to express their thoughts.
Within the activity craft packs there were games such as matching images, colour matching stamps to postcards and a completing the sequence which as they talk through steps to do will help with their early mathematical skills.
Through the story of the postcard and the postal service presented in the animation the children learnt about the role postal workers play within the local community and will cover the topic of the world around us. Postmen and women were often a highlight of the day during lockdowns and most children will be familiar with them and the ‘thumbs up for your postie’ campaign. We hope it developed their curiosity and interest in where they live as well as in the Museum.
The animated story was created for an under 5 audience and was bright, colourful and engaging with appropriate music. It encouraged children to move and to use their imagination as the postcard travels through time and through the different methods of transport. The story encouraged them to discover something new about this familiar part of their day at home and hopefully find out a little more about the area they live in through exploring the postcards in the collection.The craft videos encouraged the use of fine motor skills, imagination and creativity, through drawing, painting, colouring, sewing, mark making, sticking, the use of stamps and stickers. We provided different methods suitable for 1-5 year olds to ensure that there was something suitable for all abilities to have a go at and indeed challenge themselves at trying.
We gave out 78 packs to 110 children ranging from ages 1-9 years old.
Within those who requested packs we had parents, grandparents, playgroups and childminders.
Click here to go to the main project page.