Nursery Visit to Natural History Museum

By Anne Worsnop

On a sunny day in early spring, forty-five excited nursery children visited  The Oxford University Natural History Museum. Our focus was dinosaurs and fossils.

 We were welcomed by Chris, who sat us down under the imposing skeleton of Iguanadon and explained that we would divide into smaller groups to make the most of our visit.

In the small education room Chris gave a very entertaining talk starting with a story.  The children were amused by his cartoon illustrations on the whiteboard and explanations of how dinosaurs differed in their hunting habits and adapting to their surroundings.  Chris encouraged the children to use all their senses to appreciate the fossilized Tyrannosaurus vertebrae, an egg that was millions of years old and various other fossilized remains including dinosaur pooh......which didn’t smell incidently!

Following Chris’s talk we went on our own dinosaur hunt in the main museum and used a toy dinosaur to measure how big T Rex’s feet were comparing them with our own for size and shape as well as rushing, creeping and stomping round the trail like dinosaurs.  The children also enjoyed touching and describing several large minerals and stroking familiar animals such as the pony, badger and hare.

The Oxford Natural History Museum is a very child-friendly place and our visit was a great success. We returned to school enthusiastic to paint our own huge dinosaurs and become fossil hunters in the sand tray finding and identifying the pieces to make three different dinosaurs as well as making plaster fossils and dinosaur burgers….delicious!