Pages

Friday 16 November 2012

Manchester Museum - Ancient Worlds Exhibition

Today I went to The Manchester Museum to see the Ancient Worlds Exhibition, which of course includes a section on Ancient Egypt - the chosen topic for my client brief. I spent a couple of hours in there looking at the exhibits and taking notes. I happen to also be amongst a group of school children at the time, which gave me lots of insight and ideas, but I'll get to that in a moment.

One of the most interesting things I found out while I was reading in the plaques there (that I didn't know and hadn't read anywhere previously) that the Egyptians believed when a king died, he would actually turn into the God of the Underworld - Osiris. So each time a Pharaoh passed on to the Afterlife, he would essentially 'become' the 'new' Osiris. I'm going to look more into this because I find it really interesting, especially since i haven't read anything like it before in the books I've researched from.

Another thing that grabbed my attention was the amount of amulets that have been found and dug up from the tomb of Horudja - these were all placed on her body, inbetween the linen bandages. The Ancient Egyptians did this because they believed these amulets had magical powers and would ensure her a safe journey to the Afterlife.


So, as I was amongst a group of school children whilst I was taking notes and pictures of artefacts, I kept my ears open, listening to teachers and observing the way they were interacting and engaging with the children. I also took notes on my observation of this, noting down what the children seemed most fascinated by and the kind of work they were doing. I think watching them and observing their interaction between teachers and other pupils has opened my eyes more so to the target audience and boosted my confidence in this area.

One of the things I observed when I was at the museum was the way in which the teachers interacted with the children and the way the children interacted with each other. I noticed that that they were split into small groups and that they had been set a task with worksheets to identify certain artefacts in the museum. Once they found their sought after artefacts, they drew them on the sheet.

I thought this was a good, motivational task as it allowed kids to treat it like a treasure hunt so to speak. They seemed to be enjoying the challenge and had a lot of excitement about them as they tried to see who could find the object first.
I also heard teachers sounding out words, for example – Sarcophagus – Sar-coffa-cus. I think this is particularly interesting and helpful to children because these words aren’t always easy to remember. If they are sounded out like this or written down on paper, I think it’s more likely to stick in their minds.

One negative of today is that I only saw ONE mummy and it was badly lit too, but I did manage to get an awesome picture of it's feet! This is the mummy of Asru.





Action - Add research to file.
              Now I've gathered quite a bit of information, start thinking about worksheets and activities 






No comments:

Post a Comment