Blog: Learning

Over the last couple of months we have held a total of 5 Green Baby days at the T? Gwyrdd here at St Fagans Museum. The idea behind the Green Baby days was to promote greener practices and to lessen the environmental impact raising a baby can have. 

To help us achieve this we invited a number of experts in to help us, all of whom I’d like to thank! 

Obviously one of the main ways of lessening environmental impact when raising a child is through the use of re-usable nappies. This is also a great way of saving money, around £700! These re-usable nappies have moved on a great deal since the days of terry towelling and enormous safety pins! It was great to see peoples reactions when shown examples of the fancy newer nappies and to hear their stories! 

So I have to give a massive thank you to the 3 re-usable nappy providers who helped us over the 5 days. First of all to mamigreen who are based in Cardiff and came to help us on the first 2 Green Baby days. Secondly a huge thank you to Gemma at Little Gems Nappies (based in Pontypridd) who came to help us over 3 days last week during the Easter holidays. And also a big thank you to Melanie at Little Lion (based near Bridgend) who lent us a variety of re-usable nappies that we were able to showcase! 

If you are interested in learning more about re-usable nappies or are considering using them then check out their websites. They all cover most of the southWalesarea and offer phone consultations as well as home visit consultations! 

We also had a stand by Fairdos which is a Fairtrade shop based inCanton inCardiff. As a stockist of all kinds of Fairtrade products this was a great opportunity to showcase their range of Fairtrade cotton baby clothes, toys and bibs. A big thank you to the Fairdos volunteers who gave up their time to man the stand!

 The final area we covered was baby food. Making your own baby food is healthy, cheap, eco-friendly, and you know exactly what’s in it! We had Welsh Government advice and recipe documents for different stages available to read, and many visitors asked us where they could find these documents themselves. So here we go…

English Language Downloads

Welsh Language Downloads 

Finally, a massive thank you to everyone who came to see us during the event and for sharing your knowledge, especially those who entered our competition by posting tips on our Green Babies ideas tree! We will shortly be picking a winner and contacting them about their prize.

Inspired by the most inquisitive visitor ever who came and really tested my knowledge yesterday (perfect mental warm up for all the questions we'll get about the collections over the holidays) I thought it would be useful to give some suggestions for things to consider when exploring objects.

All objects have some kind of a story, and objects are all evidence of somewhere, something, or somebody ans as such all have stories to tell.

So when you're looking at an object for the very first time, thinking about some of these will guide your exploration:

Is it real or a model?

How old is it?

Is it man made or natural?

What might it have been used for/by whom/when/for what?

Does it remind you of anything you've seen before?

Some of our busy school visitors investigated and explored objects in the gallery, through careful questioning and research they discovered lots about their objects. Here is a selection of the labels they wrote

What a crazy few weeks of weather we have had! In one week the weather reporters have featured record breaking temperatures, hosepipe bans and now snow in many places!

The high pressure gave us plenty of sunshine and record breaking temperatures but now temperatures have returned more to what we would normally expect for the time of year.

Meanwhile, the temperature of our planet is still rising. 2010 was the hottest year across the globe. For the UK this seems to mean that wierd weather is becoming more and more normal. We have certainly seen some strange weather since starting our investigation.

BBC Horizon broadcast a program called ‘Global Weirding’, it explored the science behind why the world’s weather seems to be getting more extreme.

It will be interesteing to see what our results show this year.

I've recieved all the data now so after Easter I will be looking at the trends and discussing them with schools.

Many thanks to all the bulb buddies that have worked so hard keeping records since last November.

Enjoy the Easter Break!

www.museumwales.ac.uk/scan/bulbs

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Wood for the Trees return to the T? Gwyrdd this Saturday, 7^th of April. Earlier this year they held a footstool making workshop, which was a great success as can be seen from the picture. Participants made their own footstools from start to finish, from planing the stool legs to the upholstery work at the end. 

The footstool workshop was for people who had booked in advance, but this time the T? Gwyrdd doors will be open to all for an Upcycling Chalky Workshop! There will be a chance to make your own blackboard to take away with you and also the chance to decorate some furniture! 

The T? Gwyrdd will be open between 11 and 1 and again from 2 till 4 after lunch, so why not drop in and see what’s on offer!

Click here for more information.

These photos are from february half term, but I'd forgotten to put them on the blog until now (in fact I thought I had put them on the blog already but I must have just popped a few on twitter...).

It may be hard to tell but the art work is based on the mural of Noah's Ark in the church here in St Fagans: National History Museum. I drew the ark on a large piece of paper and asked the children to add animals to it - some they had drawn themselves and some coloured in from pictures provided. I also drew a couple of pictures of a devil and a dragon based on those in the church and they went down a storm! I must remember to bring those nasty creatures back round about halloween!

There will be drop in art sessions over the may bank holiday, so please come by and say hello!

Sian