School Activities

    Our school activities are suitable for all ages and levels including primary, secondary and A-Level. We offer workshops, hands-on activities and a teacher support service to help you get the most out of your visit. All school services are free, but must be booked in advance.

Darwin Centre

    Find out who you really are and where you come from in our interactive films about evolution, described by Sir David Attenborough.

Hands-on Activities

    Get up close and personal with Museum in these hands-on activities, where you can handle real specimens from our collections. Hundreds of real, natural history specimens for students to touch and explore are in our hands-on science centre.

Self-led Activities

    Pupils can engage with specimens through role-play in a self-guided explorer challenge through the Museum.

The Great Debate School Program

    Students are introduced to the history of the debate during a lively tour. They are then divided into groups and use exhibits to prepare presentations representing the views of the debated key characters.

Booking

    All school activities must be booked in advance by calling the schools booking line: 4420 7942 6666.

    An Oceans Vacuum

    There's a collection of plastic trash in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. It's bigger than Texas-and growing. The way to clean it up now is to catch it with nets. That is both costly and slow. Instead, the Ocean Cleanup Project proposes 62-mile-long floating barriers that would use natural currents to trap trash. If next year's trials succeed, a full cleanup operation would aim to start in 2020. It could reduce the trash by 42% over 10 years.

    Easy-On Shoes

    In 2012, Mathew Walzer, a high school student with a disability, sent a note to Nike. “My dream is to go to college,” he wrote, “without having to worry about someone coming to tie my shoes every day.” Nike assigned a design team to the challenge. This year, they came out with their solution: the FlyEase. The basketball shoe can be fastened with one hand. A pair of Nike FlyEase shoes sells for $130.

    An Airport for Drones(无人机)

    As Amazon, Google, and others get ready for drone delivery service, there is one big question: what kinds of home bases will their drones have? Rwanda, in Africa, may have the answer. There, workers will soon start work on three “drone ports”. The goal is to make it easier to transport food, medical supplies, electronics, and other goods through the hilly countryside. Construction is set to be completed in 2020.

It is hardly surprising that clothing manufacturers(生产商) follow certain uniform standards for different features of clothes. What seems strange, however, is that the standard used for women is the opposite of the one for men. Take a look at the way your clothes button. Men's clothes tend to button from the right, and women's from the left. Considering most of the world's population—men and women—are right-handed, the men's standard would appear to make more sense（更有道理） for women. So why do women's clothes button from the left?

    History really seems to matter here. Buttons first appeared only on the clothes of the rich in the 17th century, when rich women were dressed by servants. For the mostly right-handed servants, having women's shirts button from the left would be easier. On the other hand, having men's shirts button from the right made sense, too. Most men dressed themselves, and a sword（剑） drawn from the left with the right hand would be less likely to get caught in the shirt.

    Today women are seldom dressed by servants, but buttoning from the left is still the standard for them. Is it interesting? Actually, a standard, once it is set, resists change. At a time when all women's shirts buttoned from the left, it would have been risky for any single manufacturer to offer women's shirts that buttoned from the right. After all, women had grown so used to shirts which buttoned from the left and would have to develop new habits and skills to switch. Besides, some women might have found it socially awkward to appear in public wearing shirts that buttoned from the right, since anyone who noticed that would believe they were wearing men's shirts.

    This player is neither the answer to Bafana Bafana's goal-scoring problem, nor holds any hope of being in the national team for the World Cup. But Mmane Koko trains every morning and is now used to playing soccer. She said, 'Before I can do my domestic(家庭的) jobs, I go to train every morning. This helps me keep my body healthy. I started exercising after my doctor told me that exercising can keep my body healthy.'

    Mmane Koko, aged 66, said if she had been exposed to soccer at an earlier age, she would have become a top South African striker and could have stolen the limelight from Noko Matlou, who helped South Africa achieve its best ever result in the African women's soccer cup. She encourages young people to start playing sports early and to continue into their old age as it helps to lower blood pressure and prevent obesity(肥胖症).

    She added that because soccer is not only about exercising, but also helps one to put bread on the table, it could make a difference socially. She also says soccer is a business and that clubs these days pay generously. Therefore if the young take sports seriously, they can make a living out of it. But this can only happen if our government participate in developing sports and building stadiums for future generations.

    Exercise does us a lot of good as Mmane Koko says. We can live longer and feel better through exercise. It gives us energy surprisingly enough! Regular exercise reduces our risk of all kinds of disease. It can help us relieve stress and anxiety, increase our endurance(耐力) and sleep better. Exercise can contribute to our mental well-being and helps treat depression. So if you want to stay fit, keep on exercising to keep your body healthy.

    Most heroes are not super. They don't appear in comic books, on television, or in movies. They just do what they believe needs to be done to make their world a better place. Bike Batman is one of them.

    Bike Batman is a 30-year-old married engineer who lives in Seattle, Washington. He's a cyclist who also buys and sells bikes as a hobby.

    About three years ago, he was looking for a bike for his wife. He found one on Craigslist, a website where people list things they want to sell. As he often does, he also looked at Bike Index, a popular website that allows users to register their bikes and post reports when they're taken. The bike, which he was considering purchasing, clearly matched one reported stolen on Bike Index.

    Then he called the person who claimed to be the bike's owner and arranged to meet him— supposedly to complete the sale. When the two men met, Bike Batman told the thief, “You've got two options. You can wait until a police officer gets here, or you can just get out of here.” You can imagine what the thief did.

    After that first success, Bike Batman developed a safer routine. When he sees questionable bike ads on Craigslist, he cross-references the image with bikes reported on Bike Index. Once he has confirmed it with the owner, he arranges a meet-up with the thief and will call the Seattle police department so that officers can participate in the action. In more than half of the 22 cases in which he has got back and returned bikes, the thieves have been arrested. In one case, Bike Batman even helped a family recover a wide range of prized possessions that suspects had stolen during a home burglary.

    His nickname came from a discussion with a police officer who suggested he be called “Robin Hood”. Since he wasn't exactly stealing from the rich and giving to the poor, “Batman” seemed a better fit. The idea of a superhero punishing criminals feels pretty silly to him, but the main reason he continues his work is to keep up Seattle's reputation as a friendly city.

    Dr. Nancy Roman, born in 1925, who was celebrated as a pioneer for female scientists and had advanced the launch of the Hubble Space Telescope, died on Dec 25, 2018.

    When Nancy Roman asked for permission to take a second algebra (代数)course in high school,a teacher demanded to know "what lady would take mathematics instead of Latin". In college, a professor admitted that he often tried to prevent women from majoring in physics but Nancy stuck to it. And after receiving Doctor's degree in astronomy. , she found a professional home at NASA(美国宇航局)In 1959, Dr. Roman became the first chief of astronomy at NASA. headquarters, a role that made her one of the agency's first female leaders.

    Dr Roman spent much of her career helping develop, fund and promote technology that would help scientists see more clearly beyond Earths atmosphere. But her most well-known work was perhaps leading to design the Hubble Space Telescope the first major telescope to be sent into space for the purpose of gathering photographs and data from the universe. She was, therefore, named as "the mother of Hubble".

    "She made it possible to get the early telescope up into space to learn what needed to be learned," said science historian Bob Zimmerman: and her hard-nosed nature helped get the telescope built.

    The telescope did not launch until 1990, a little more than a decade after Dr Roman retired, but when it did, its photographs of the universe thrilled the world.  I am glad, "she once told Science, "I ignored the people who told me that I could not be an astronomer. "