Christmas at the Toy Museum

S and I spent the day at The Museum of Childhood in Bethnal Green this week.

We used the book "Christmas at The Toy Museum" by David Luscas (ISBN 978-1406324594 ) as a starting point for a Christmas themed hunt.

A Christmas at the Toy Museum Hunt

In the story, the toys wrap themselves up as Christmas presents when they realise that there are none under the tree for them. To hunt for the toys in the museum I put a picture of each of the toys in a small wedding favour box and placed them in a bag to be selected at random.

We then looked for the toys in the displays. Next to each toy was a letter and it is here that we combined our own homemade hunt with a Lost in the Museum trail produced by the museum. 

Once we had completed the trail all the letters we had found spelt "found you".

At the end of the book, Bunting the Cat, a prime time character, still doesn't have a present to unwrap. A helpful Angel presents Bunting with a beautiful golden box which contains a twinkling Christmas star. 

I presented S with a golden box at lunch which totally suprised him.

Inside not a star but a horse puppet. S loves the rocking horses in this museum!

He even did an impromptu puppet show on the steps!

What Christmas themed books have you adapted at a museum?

Walking through the jungle style museum hunt

On our visit to the Fitwilliam Museum today we played a game based on the book "Walking Through the Jungle" by Julie Lacome (ISBN 9780744536430)

On a previous visit I had taken some pictures of jungle-type animals and stuck them into cards with a clue to solve. I read the clue to the boys and they had to hunt for the animal somewhere in the gallery. We always had the picture to check if they weren't sure. After playing it once S wanted to have a go and told us the rhyme.

He then compared the picture to the artefact to check it was correct.

It was great fun and a lovely way to mix art and stories. I also managed to snap a few more pictures ready to make my next game!