Blog: Learning

The Cardiff Cycle Challenge sees workplaces compete to see who can get the most staff cycling. This summer staff at National Museum Cardiff took and won their category! Our team prize was a delicious cup cake delivery – well deserved after the calories we burnt!

The stats:

Fifty of the 297 staff cycled 4,565 miles and burnt 144,350 calories as part of their daily commute!

By cycling they prevented another 1,170kg of carbon dioxide being pumped into our atmosphere.

Whilst we put in an extra bit of effort for the competition – we do cycle all year around. Recent, investment in bicycles shelters and staff training has helped to get more and more people involved.

Two thousand bulbs being planted in Scotland today! Good luck Scotland and please wrap up warm as the temperature is a chilly 3 or 4 degrees! Temperatures across the UK have fallen dramatically today making it feel very much like winter.

Welsh and English schools are finishing up for half term and all the schools are preparing for recording their 1st weather records on the 5th of November! 

Click here for info on keeping weather records

Click here to ensure fair test when planting your bulbs

Please take a look at these lovely pics sent in by Stanford in the Vale Primary School.

Many thanks

Professor Plant

Next week is half term and that means there will be lots going on at the T? Gwyrdd at St Fagans. 

On Tuesday and Wednesday next week, 30^th and 31^st of October, we will be celebrating Halloween by dedicating two days of activities to some of our favourite residents of the museum. We have many species of bat living at St Fagans and there will be a chance to find out much more about these fascinating creatures! What facts do you know about bats? How many of these are true and how many are myths?? 

With the help of our team of volunteers, including Anne-mie who's an artist, we will also be creating a batty art installation in the T? Gwyrdd. We are hoping to create a large willow bat which we can hang in the house and surround with many, many baby bats! We need your help so that we can make as many of these baby bats as possible! As you can see from the picture, these will all be made from recycled newspaper, elastic bands and pipe cleaners! 

Next week also sees St Fagans’ Halloween Nights events. The museum will be open after dark with many activities taking place. Again, we will be championing the bat with some crafty activities taking place each night. Halloween Nights take place between Tuesday the 30^th of October and Thursday the 1^st of November. Tickets MUST be purchased in advance. Click here for more info  

Towards the end of next week we will be leaving Halloween behind and taking a look at some of the brilliant foodstuffs that are in season at this time of year! On Friday and Saturday (2^nd & 3^rd of November) I will be cooking up a treat in the T? Gwyrdd kitchen using some traditional recipes and ingredients grown in the T? Gwyrdd garden! Come along to taste some chutneys, soup and maybe even some cakes! There will also be recipe sheets that you can take home to try out some of the recipes for yourself! 

All in all, next week promises to be very busy but lots of fun with plenty going on, so why not pop over to the T? Gwyrdd to see us!

Four and a half thousand school scientists across England and Wales planted bulbs for a climate investigation being run by Amgueddfa Cymru - National Museum Wales.

Each pupil planted their bulbs and followed simple methodology to ensure a fair test. Before planting, they learned how to care for bulbs and completed adoption certificates as a promise to care for their bulbs.

This is just the beggining for this years participants who will be recording flowering times and weather conditions every week until the end of March.

I visited St Joseph's school in Penarth to see how they were getting along and was amazed by how excited and involved in the project they were. Mrs Dunstan has done a great job working with the class to create a great display about the project. On questioning, it was clear that the class knew they were helping with a larger experiment and what it was about.

I was delighted to hear a Yr.3 pupil question "Is it a fair-test if all Scottish schools are planting a week later?" It showed that she was really thinking about the logistics of this large scale study. I explained that the Scottish schools had to plant on another date because their holiday dates are quite different to those in England and Wales and that we would look at the Scottish data separately as a result.  After our discussion we went outside to do the planting - see my pictures.

Meanwhile in West Wales, Stepaside School were also busy planting. Here are pictures of the Yr.3 pupils involved this year.

If any other schools have any images they would like to share please send them to me.

Good luck with the planting this week in Scotland - I hope it stays dry!

Many Thanks

Professor Plant 

Teachers descended on the National Museum Cardiff last weekend to take part in workshops and talks aimed at engaging pupils with numeracy in a fun and creative way.

Prof Chris Budd, BathUniversity, and Rob Eastaway, Maths Inspiration, gave extremely interesting and lively talks covering maths in the modern world, including how google works, and ways of being creative with maths.

The workshops featured teachers programming their own computer games (Technocamps), becoming maths detectives to solve a crime (Techniquest), finding out how technology works (CardiffMetropolitanUniversity), exploring maths in nature (Amgueddfa Cymru-National Museum Wales), and discovering ideas for fun and stimulating games (TES Science).

This year’s conference is a partnership between The Association for Science Education Cymru and Amgueddfa Cymru – National Museum Wales. It has been running for the past 4 years and draws in teachers from Wales and England (and even Australia this year!).

Keep your eyes peeled for next year’s conference – we hope to see you then!

Thank you to everyone who made this year’s a success!