Home >> Reviews >> Features >> 2012 >> Jun >> JUBILEE HOLIDAYS: Our guide to keeping the kids Royally entertained at half-term
JUBILEE HOLIDAYS: Our guide to keeping the kids Royally entertained at half-term
Museums and galleries
V&A Museum of Childhood
plenty on offer, starting with a Jubilee celebration in Royal Rumpus (Saturday and Sunday noon-4pm): listen to a re-telling of The Princess and the Pea (noon), make a crown or flag at the drop-in arts and crafts table (2-4pm) and show off the creations at the museum’s Royal Promenade at 3.30pm. Free, all ages.
Half-term week continues with Playful Puppets (Monday-Sunday 11am-4pm). This storytelling session tells how The Glove Puppet Man helps everyone solve their problems (10.30am, 11.15am and noon). And a Punch and Judy puppet can be made at the crafts table (2-4pm) – complete the Playful Puppet trail for a chance to win a prize. Free, all ages.
• V&A Museum of Childhood, Cambridge Heath Road, E2 9PA, 020 8983 5200, www.museumofchildhood.org.uk
Maptastic family fun at London Transport Museum
Throughout half-term week children can take part in free make-and-take craft workshops and storytelling sessions that draw on London Transport Museum’s new exhibition Mind the Map: Inspiring Art, Design and Cartography. As well as daily workshops, there will also be a creative design session for children which will be led by Claire Brewster, one of the exhibition artists.
Storytelling – The Littlest Map of All (June 4-8, 11am, under-5s). A story written especially for the week’s activities, this is a lovely story with an important message. The littlest map may not look as big or appear as spectacular as the other maps but he always gets people where they need to go in the quickest, safest way with a friendly attitude. Join this fun storytelling session and cheer for the littlest map as he surprises everyone with his determination.
Craft workshop – Pin and Paste (June 4-8, noon-1.30pm, age 5+). Taking inspiration from the Mind the Map exhibition, children can make their own maptastic pinboards and personalised Tube maps.
Craft Workshop – Moving Maps (June 4-8, 2-3.30pm, age 5+). Children can choose to make map patterned fridge magnets, luggage tags, bunting or perfect pinwheels that spin in the wind.
Artist led workshop – Creatures by Design (June 7, 11am-1pm, age 8+, free but please call or email to reserve a space. Contact Stephen.moorhouse@ltmuseum.co.uk / 020 7565 7421). Claire Brewster will lead a creative and workshop to craft paper birds or insects from old transport maps.
• London Transport Museum, Covent Garden Piazza, WC2, open Saturday-Thursday 10am-6pm; Friday 11am-6pm (last admission 5.15pm). Workshops are free. Entrance to the Museum is free for children under 16. Adults £13.50 (£10 conc) and tickets allow free entry for a whole year. 020 7379 6344, www.ltmuseum.co.uk
Take One Picture
National Gallery
The gallery’s countrywide scheme for primary schools focuses on one painting to inspire curriculum work. The inventive results from this year’s painting – Paolo Veronese’s “The Family of Darius before Alexander” – include storytelling, three-dimensional art, textiles and digital animation.
• Take One Picture is in Room E until September 16. Admission free.
For the half-term holiday the gallery has two special workshops for 5 to 11-year-olds: Royal Regatta and Jubilee Art Labs (June 4 and 5, 11am-3pm, Room 38, free; booking not necessary but places are allocated on arrival up to one hour before the start).
• National Gallery, Trafalgar Square, WC2, 020 7747 2885, www.nationalgallery.org.uk
Grant Museum of
Zoology
Extreme Animals
This free event is a chance to encounter some of the “biggest, smallest, heaviest, lightest, strongest, cutest, ugliest, weirdest and wildest animals in Bloomsbury’s Grant Museum. Hands-on activities with museum specimen record-breakers. No need to book.
• Extreme Animals half-term activities, Grant Museum of Zoology, Rockefeller Building, University College London, 21 University Street, WC1E 6DE, 020 3108 2052, www.ucl.ac.uk/museums/zoology/whatson
The Geffrye
Fantastic Food
The Geffrye Museum of the Home is describing its half-term activities on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday of next week as “a feast for all the senses”, with a series of workshops on a food theme – bake floral-flavoured cakes, plant seeds or print herbal-patterned aprons. The activities are grouped according to age, with sessions for 3 to 5-year-olds, 5 to 8-year-olds and 8 and over (up to 16). Details on the website.
The museum also stages Saturday Specials, with Wonderful Wooden Toys the theme for Saturday June2 (10.30am- 12.30pm and 1-4pm), with the chance to make 19th-century style wooden toys inspired by the mini-beasts, animals, plants and flowers in the museum's gardens.
Activities are free, and places are allocated on a first-come, first-served basis 30 minutes prior to each activity.
• Fantastic Food, June 6-8 at The Geffrye Museum of the Home, Kingsland Road, E2 8EA. 020 7739 9893, www.geffrye-museum.org.uk
The Bank of England Museum
Until June 8, you can see The Bank and the Monarch. The link between the monarch and the Bank goes back to the earliest days of the institution in 1694. Today that connection continues, most notably on banknotes.
Meanwhile, Crowning Glory runs June 6-8 from (10am to 4.30pm). Find examples of crowns in the exhibition to celebrate the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee and in the pictures of kings and queens in the museum. You can also create your own crown to take home, and enter the competition quiz about monarchs and the Bank with prizes to be won.
• The Bank of England Museum, Threadneedle Street, EC2R 8AH, 020 7601 5545, www.bankofengland.co.uk/ museum
Art shop events
Cass Art
workshops and bargains
Crowns, diamonds, flags and portraits of the Queen: Cass Art is in patriotic mood for the Jubilee celebrations with four days of free activities for children in their stores in Islington, Hampstead and Kensington. There’s also a 10 per cent discount on everything.
On Saturday it’s Crown-making and face-painting; on Sunday the hunt is on for hidden diamonds, with a castle to be built in the Makedo craft workshop; on Monday it’s a paint workshop with Union Jacks in Jackson Pollock style; and on Tuesday portraits of the Queen will be added to a collaborative royal collage.
Half-term continues with free special activities for 4 to 12-year-olds at the Islington and Hampstead shops: Make Picasso inspired animal pots in clay (June 6, Hampstead, 12-4pm); create Decopatch papier mache animals (June 6, Islington, 11am-5pm); Hands-on watercolour workshop (June 7, Islington and Hampstead, 11am-5pm); Mix and match your favourite Superhero (Islington and Hampstead, 11am-5pm); Creative activities from Mario Deuchars’ book Make Some Great Art (Hampstead and Islington, June 9, 11am-5pm); and make 3D sun-catchers (June 10, Islington, 12-4pm). All materials provided.
• Cass Art: Islington, 66-67 Colebrooke Row, N1, 020 7354 2999; Hampstead, 58-62 Heath Street, NW3; Kensington, 220 Kensington High Street, W8. www.cassart.co.uk
Theatres and plays
Unicorn Theatre
Something Very Far Away
Live animation in front of, puppets, music and sound – but no words at all – tell the story of Kepler, an ordinary man “who loves two things beyond all others: the cosmos and his wife Tomasina. After a sudden and tragic loss, he looks to the stars for answers and journeys deep into space to keep the thing most precious to him alive”. Written and directed by Mark Arends, this play about love, loss, space and time follows Kepler as he travels through the universe with his telescope and discovers the power of memory.
On Sunday June 3, from 11am, visitors are invited to come for coffee and prepare their Union Jack flags and windsocks and wave at the Royal flotilla as it passes on the Thames.
On June 10 and 24, from 1pm, there’s a chance to make a puppet at a workshops before watching Kepler’s adventure.
And on Father’s Day, June 17, star-gazing Dads can explore the galaxy at a special event before the show.
• Something Very Far Away is at the Unicorn Theatre, 147 Tooley Street, SE1 2HZ, from June 1-24,
Suitable for 8 to 11-year-olds, running time approx 35 minutes.
Shakespeare’s Globe
For this special Jubilee half-term and in the build-up to the Olympics, the Globe’s Exhibition and Tour is celebrating international and national pageantry, with a Design A Flag competition. Young visitors will be encouraged to draw inspiration from the festival and design a flag.
Email a picture of the completed flag in a favourite London location to digital@ shakespearesglobe.com. Entries will be uploaded to a gallery on the Globe's Facebook page for all to see. Participants will be entered into a prize draw to win a £2 voucher to spend in the Globe Shop.
The Exhibition will include a variety of demonstrations including Stage Fighting, with a display of Elizabethan stage combat; Elizabethan Dressing, with visitors having the chance to be dressed in replica clothes that were fashionable in the 16th century; and Printing the Plays, which will show how Shakespeare's words went from the stage to the printed page.
The demonstrations are included in the price of the Globe Exhibition and Tour ticket; during half-term they will depart every half hour from 9.30am to 5pm (except Thursday June 7 when the final tour begins at 12.30pm).
• Shakespeare’s Globe, 21 New Globe Walk, Bankside, SE1 9DT. Half-term Exhibition and Tour, June 4-8, adults £13.50 (60+ £12), children £8, under-5s free; family (up to 2 adults and 3 children) £36. 020 7902 1500, www.shakespearesglobe. com/exhibition/jubilee-half-term
Purcell Room
Southbank Centre
The Girl Who Forgot to Sing Badly
This family by Finegan Kruckemeyer, presented by The Ark and Theatre Lovett, tells the story of Peggy O’Hegarty who, with her parents, is a packer – “squeezing fruit into tins, foxes into boxes, even bikes into paper bags”. And all the while, Peggy sings with the voice of an angel – “a grossly unfortunate angel who can’t sing”. When the jobs stop coming in, Peggy discovers that outside winter has arrived, and everyone in her city has gone. She tries to save the day, and along the way, we learn about “love, loss, the reassurance of goats and the courage to sing gloriously on or off-key”.
• The Girl Who Forgot to Sing Badly is at the Purcell Room, Southbank Centre, Belvedere Road, SE1 6XX, from June 2-8, Suitable for children aged 6+, running time approx 1 hour. £12 + £1.75 booking fee, 020 7960 4200, http://ticketing.southbankcentre.co.uk/find/dance-performance/tickets/th...
Polka Theatre
half-term workshops
For young people with a hankering to get involved in the theatre, whether it’s in the spotlight singing, dancing and acting or pulling strings behind the scenes, the Polka Theatre, with its reputation for inspiring education work, could be just the thing. Upcoming workshops include:
June 6: Beat Boxer: Behind the Scenes (10am-12.30pm, 8 to 13 year olds). Find out about being a professional beat boxer with Grace Savage, and see if you have the makings of a champion (£20)
June 7: Story Racers (10.30am-12.30pm, 5 to 7-year-olds). Described as one story, two teams and a race against the clock, this is a fast-paced story game and workshop
June 8: Theatre Sports Olympics (10.30am-12.30pm, 7 to 11-year-olds). Improvisation workshop offers a fun way to get into the sporting spirit (£20).
• Polka Theatre, 240 The Broadway, Wimbledon, SW19 1SB, 020 8543 4888, www.polkatheatre.com
The Ugly Duckling
Little Angel Theatre
This production of Hans Anderson’s enduring tale of the little Duckling who grows up feeling “different”, presented by charming puppets for very young children, stays close to the spirit of the original story.
• The Ugly Duckling is at the Little Angel Theatre, 14 Dagmar Passage, N1 2DN, until June 8. Running time 1 hour 10 minutes, 020 7226 1787, www.littleangeltheatre.com
Outdoors
The Ecology Centre
Holland Park
Outdoor activities for 5 to 10-year-olds are on offer in the centre's wooded wildlife area next Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. From learning crafts such as weaving natural objects and making a potpourri; survival skills of map-reading and shelter-building; and close encounters hunter for minibeasts and frogs, toads and newts, the two-hour sessions offer great variety.
• Full details of the six sessions on the website. To book or for further information contact Holland Park Ecology Centre, The Stable Yard, Ilchester Place, W8 6LU, £5 per 2-hour session. Must book. 020 7938 8186, email: ecology.centre@rbkc.gov.uk, www.rbkc.gov.uk/ecology
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