Thursday 11th November saw year 7 students from Berkhamsted School going to the Natural History Museum (for Boys) and Victoria and Albert Museum (for Girls). I was fortunate enough to be asked to accompany a group of boys to the Natural History Museum and can report that it was a very enjoyable day! The boys were extremely polite, well behaved and very attentive: a real credit to both parents and teachers!
The students were all issued with a worksheet and asked to draw various items such as dinosaurs, insects and
Alfred Waterhouse's terracotta creatures which adorn the building's walls.
The boys were put to task, and seem to really enjoy the challenge of drawing dinosaur skeletons and though they found measuring various limbs extremely testing, they still managed to complete their sketches in record time.
I believe their favorite item in the dinosaur area was the giant animatronic T. rex model equipped with its powerful huge jawbone and 15-centimetre-long teeth!
The 'creepy crawly area' greeted us with a living colony of leaf cutting ants moving on a thin balanced branch: this interactive learning seem to really spark the boys enthusiasm! They soon found a space to sit quietly and draw various creatures such as spiders and millipedes.
Before lunch, the boys quietly finished off their worksheets with drawings of the world famous Waterhouse architectural terracotta. Terracotta in its unglazed form, became fashionable as an architectural ceramic construction material in England in the 1860 and Waterhouse used it to decorate the building (constructed between 1873 and 1881). The boys found this really challenging and by this time, were quite ready for their pack lunch!
Waterhouse terracotta decorations:
After lunch, the boys choose to go to the 'red zone' to discover the wonders of the earth with it volcanoes, earthquakes and a giant Earth model through which the escalator took us.
This time, the boys were given a little more freedom to look around without a worksheet. They really enjoyed looking at all the fossils and various aspects of Earth's natural forces. They loved the precious stones displays with their myriad of colours.
Peronsally, I really enjoyed seeing all the fossilised waves and cracks showing the powerful force of water, wind and droughts.
Fossilised waves:
Images of cracks and fossilised cracks:
I will finish this entry with photographs of fake fossilised 21 century items embedded in the wall. Although this is a spoof of what our civilisation might leave behind, it highlights the importance of archeology and how it can give us clues on how the earth once was. There is no doubt that Waterhouse must have got inspired from Victorian explorer's treasures, including fossils and drawings of exotic creatures, which he translated into his terracotta adornments.
