Decorating the Learning Space
22 July 2016
Community and Learning Intern Blog
This is Alannah here, keeping you updated on our second week here at Stowe House!
As the hot sun beats down on the beautiful gardens here at Stowe House, Fran and I look back at just how much we’ve achieved over the past week, and marvel at how much our cutting, sticking and colouring skills have improved.
The Learning Centre here at Stowe House now looks less like a dental surgery waiting room, and more like a colourful and welcoming space for children to get creative in. We’ve added bunting, a bright welcome sign, arts and crafts activities for the children to complete, more bunting, a sandpit and, indeed, even more bunting. In anticipation of the school summer holidays starting next week and in-keeping with this summer’s theme of ‘The Builders of Stowe’, we’ve been busy creating fun activities for child. We’ve equipped the Learning Centre with fold-out colouring sheets which will give children the opportunity to design Stowe House in any way they want – inside and out! A wall in the Learning Centre is also now covered with a giant sheet of coloured paper onto which visitors can stick their drawings of temples and monuments to create a big picture of the Stowe House gardens. We have also added activities to two of the beautiful rooms here which are described in the Family Multimedia Guide so children can write their own newspaper article about Stowe School and can design their own Stowe House room.
The Welcome Centre has now had its pen pot replaced by a much nicer wooden pen and paper box into which the colouring sheets Fran designed have been placed for families to get creative with. The Welcome Centre also now has a basket full of colourful building blocks for our young visitors to enjoy playing with. And finally, after a few printing problems, our Activity Trail is now complete and should be up and running shortly so children can play a treasure hunt game around the House.
The cutting, sticking and arranging does not, however, stop there! We have been busy making a display of artwork inspired by Stowe which has been created by children from local schools. This Open Art exhibition will be on display over the summer so the public can enjoy the many colourful and detailed drawings and paintings the Key Stage 3 and 4 children created, all of which are absolutely fantastic!
As with Fran’s search for Pokémon around the Stowe House gardens with the Pokémon GO app, our research into digital learning and soundscapes continues full-steam ahead. We are focussing on how museums currently use digital resources for learning, what type of soundscape Fran and I could create to give children an exciting and engaging experience, and how the team at the House could use digital technology in future to develop the Community & Learning department’s mission of bringing the history of the House alive for our younger visitors.
So all in all, a very busy week here at Stowe which I’m sure will get even busier once the school summer holidays begin! We’re really looking forward to whatever challenges, tasks and projects next week will bring.