Schools and teachers: Early Years
The Museum is an inspiring setting for Early Years learning. It offers a range of fun and informative hands-on sessions and online resources that are free to all schools.
Visits are up to two hours long and include a 30 minute handling workshop and a self-guided trail in the museum. We can accommodate classes of up to 45 children in one visit.
You may have been on a ‘Bear Hunt’ at Nursery but now you can take your children on a ‘Dinosaur Hunt’ and you’re guaranteed to find a ‘big one!’
During your visit the class will spilt into two groups and rotate between a self-guided ‘We’re Going on a Dinosaur Hunt’ trail with their own mini dinosaurs and a handling session in the Museum classroom looking at fossils and dinosaurs to explore what dinosaurs really were and how we know about them.Download Dinosaur Hunters Teacher Sheet
Download Dinosaur Hunters Trail
Starting with a reading of ‘Funny Bones’, we explore what a skeleton is and why animals have them. See and touch different skeleton types and handle live bugs to feel their super skeletons!
Download Funny Bones Trail
Nursery Rhyme Animals
Explore the real characters behind Humpty Dumpty and Incy-Wincy and how we classify life around us. This session uses nursery rhymes to introduce children to the real animals the rhymes are based on. Using real museum specimens and the Nursery Rhymes Humpty Dumpty, Incy-Wincy Spider, Five Little Spotted Frogs, Hickory Dickory Dock and Two Little Dicky Birds we investigate what mammals, amphibians, birds, reptiles and bugs are and what kind of egg Humpty might have been!
Download Amazing Animals Trail
After reading ‘The Bugliest Bug’ children explore the wonderful world of bugs and minibeasts and find out what makes an insect an insect and a spider a spider. Explore some of our spectacular 5 million pinned insects and some live ones too.
Download Bug Bonanza Trail
The Snake's Tale
Take our super-sized soft snake on a self-guided slither around the Museum to see our spectacular specimens. Your journey is guided by the snake’s story and a map showing where to discover the creatures he met along the way. The snake poses questions for observant little eyes to find the answers to. Each snake can take 6 children and one adult on a tour.
Download The Snake's Tale Trail
Online resources: image banks and colouring sheets
- Birds and mammals
An image bank containing photographs of a number of Museum specimens, introducing children to some of the more common birds and mammals of Britain.
- Is it real?
Children often get confused about whether the Museum specimens they see are actually real; this image bank attempts to clear up any confusion.
- Park life
A series of photographs of the plants and animals that children may see on a visit to their local park.
- Colouring sheets
A fun introduction to a range of specimens in the Museum; perfect for a rainy afternoon.
The image banks and trails are PDF format and are all 800kB or less in size.
To read these files you will need to download Adobe Reader
Enquiries regarding education services should be sent to: email@example.com