Today we went to visit the
Museum of Childhood. This is housed in a beautiful 1872 building in Bethnal Green.
The mission of the museum is "To enable everyone, especially the young, to explore and enjoy the designed world, in particular objects made for and made by children." It certainly lived up to this! It takes a moment to get used to the space. It isn't like a conventional museum with separated galleries and sections. There are loosely labelled sections (Moving Toys, Creativity etc.) and there are also sections on specific subjects (at the time we visited there was information on Teen knife crime, Punch and Judy and Modern British Childhood) but in fact the whole space is one large room and you can see every part of it at all times. There are displays and glass cases, but also play areas and interactive sections. It all makes for a lovely relaxed interactive space where children and adults alike can happily spend hours.
Here are some things we picked out.....
One of the first sections we went to was the Modern British Childhood exhibition. Showing how childhood changed from the 1950s to present day. One of our favourite bits was the sound shades; under each was music from the appropriate decade.
Povey was obviously most interested in finding Lego, and we did find some old Lego on display along with other construction toys....
....and even some construction toys to play with...
He also liked the moving picture toys like zoetropes....
Hehe you can see me in the mirror in that last one! Another favourite for Povey was the computer game where you built your own toy and manoeuvred it through a maze...
Povey surprised me by also being very keen to fill out the little workbook! We've found that museums often have these and I like to get them for the children to fill out as we go around as it shows them things they might not otherwise spot. Usually it's Papaya who most wants to do them though.
I particularly liked his version of the image on the Queen's coronation jigsaw....
Papaya's favourite parts of the museum were the sand pit....
.... the Sensory Pod....
The dolls house section, which had dolls houses you could play with...
The board games; she thrashed Povey at her own made up version of Wizard Chess on a draughts board ;)
Papaya also loved the role-play sections, like the Victorian style play kitchen...
.....and the fire engine complete with uniforms!
Two of her other favourite things we had to wait until the afternoon to use as there were queues of school children about! That was the rocking horses....
....and the Juke Box.
I picked out a few things I liked there too, a stunning modernist dolls house based on a real peice of architecture...
A similarlarly modernistic beach buggy, designed and built by
Gerrit Thomas Rietveld, a Dutch furniture designer and one of the members of the De Stijl movement, for his own children in the 1920s.
.....a doll I owned as a child that "danced"!
....and a couple of fun party outfits....
....this dress was particularly lovely....
You can do a virtual tour
here, but I really recommend going along yourself! it was a very pleasant place to spend time and I suspect we'll be going back again and again!
