Extend the Play

A pretend museum is a great place to develop imagination and creativity so here are lots of ideas for ways to enhance children’s self expression, their ability to communicate and develop critical thinking skills.

Make a café

You can add play food and even an additional table to set up a play cafe as part of the museum visit. Through role play children can continue to practice extending their vocabulary in an immersive environment.

Introduce a museum shop

Why not introduce a craft table to allow children to create objects to sell in a museum shop. Children can build their confidence using fine motor skills as they learn to explore a variety of materials and work with different tools developing new techniques and ideas.

Make signs, posters and leaflets

You could set up a writing table offering opportunities for mark making, drawing or even writing. Children can create brown signs to direct museum visitors. They could even make posters or museum flyers. Why not collect examples of flyers from local visitor centres to inspire children, or even provide some of these templates for the children to work from.

By adding an easel to the play museum children can take it in turns to display their work, giving them a motivation to make and share their ideas.

You could set up a different activity in your museum on different days. You can continue to extend children’s familiarity with museums and the content of the class collection enriching children’s cultural awareness and understanding of the world at the same time.

• Try to set up the collection of objects into an outdoor space in your setting. You can provide the collection of objects in a box along with a selection of wrapping materials such as tissue paper. Encourage children to transport the objects carefully to and from the museum using outdoor play equipment such as tractors trikes and trailers. Children will be motivated to negotiate travelling safely and develop gross motor skills.

• Why not invite the children’s adults to visit  the museum? You could make the experience more realistic for the children by swapping out the café play food for a drink of squash and a biscuit, for example. A real shop of children’s craft creations could also provide opportunities to use real money, with adult support. A simple drop-in event at home time will help children to work collaboratively and develop critical thinking and planning skills.

• What happens to the objects in the museum at night? Create stories about what might happen in the museum once the lights are turned off for the night. Why not ask children to make props and recount their ideas with their peers and teacher.

• Imagine a VIP is visiting the museum. Who could it be? If it’s the king you may need to make some bunting and flags or even add some fancy hats to wear. Have an adult dress up as the VIP once preparations are completed. Children can practice using new vocabulary during this role-play activity.

• Imagine an object from the museum has gone missing. You could set up a mystery day to encourage children to be detectives and work out which object or objects have gone missing. You could extend this further by leaving clues which the children could use to help find the object.