Welcome to Reading Museum's Hands – on Learning service

    Reading Museum has been offering learning opportunities to schools for over 100 years, and with your support we hope to continue this tradition for the next 100 years.

    SESSIONS AT READING MUSEUM

    Victorian Schoolroom

    The session takes place in a superb reconstruction of a schoolroom in a late nineteenth century Board School. The children will experience a range of Victorian style lessons and use slate boards and dip pens. The session leader plays the role of a Victorian teacher but will come out of the role during the session the reassure the children. We supply costume for all children.

    Victorian Toys

    Our Victorian nanny delivers this interesting session. The nanny will help children to explore the differences between rich and poor children's toys from the past. During the session the children have the opportunity to make a toy to take home.

    Victorian Christmas

    In a specially decorated room the children will find out how the Victorians introduced many of our Christmas customs. They will make a simple card or present to take home and take part in a mini pantomime.

    HOW TO BOOK AN EDUCATIONAL VISIT

    For up to date prices and session details, please visit our website www.readingmuseum.org.uk/schools/sessions/

    For all session bookings please phone us on 01189373400. We ask that you book at least 4 weeks in advance. Please be ready to tell us when you wish to come, the session(s) you wish to book and the year group of pupils.

Our sessions take place between 10:00 and 12:00 or 12:30 and 14:30.

    The maximum group size is 35 pupils. We recommend that you bring 5 adults for each group.

    There's a new frontier in 3D printing that's beginning to come into focus: food. Recent development has made possible machines that print, cook, and serve foods on a mass scale. And the industry isn't stopping there.

     Food production

    With a 3D printer, a cook can print complicated chocolate sculptures and beautiful pieces for decoration on a wedding cake. Not everybody can do that — it takes years of experience, but a printer makes it easy. A restaurant in Spain uses a Foodini to "re-create forms and pieces" of food that are "exactly the same," freeing cooks to complete other tasks. In another restaurant, all of the dishes and desserts it serves are 3D-printed, rather than farm to table.

    Sustainability(可持续性)

    The global population is expected to grow to 9.6 billion by 2050, and some analysts estimate that food production will need to be raised by 50 percent to maintain current levels. Sustainability is becoming a necessity. 3D food printing could probably contribute to the solution. Some experts believe printers could use hydrocolloids (水解胶体) from plentiful renewables like algae(藻类) and grass to replace the familiar ingredients(烹饪原料). 3D printing can reduce fuel use and emissions. Grocery stores of the future might stock "food" that lasts years on end, freeing up shelf space and reducing transportation and storage requirements.

    Nutrition

    Future 3D food printers could make processed food healthier. Hod Lipson, a professor at Columbia University, said, "Food printing could allow consumers to print food with customized nutritional content, like vitamins. So instead of eating a piece of yesterday's bread from the supermarket, you'd eat something baked just for you on demand."

    Challenges

    Despite recent advancements in 3D food printing, the industry has many challenges to overcome. Currently, most ingredients must be changed to a paste(糊状物) before a printer can use them, and the printing process is quite time-consuming, because ingredients interact with each other in very complex ways. On top of that, most of the 3D food printers now are restricted to dry ingredients, because meat and milk products may easily go bad. Some experts are skeptical about 3D food printers, believing they are better suited for fast food restaurants than homes and high-end restaurants.

    Languages have been coming and going for thousands of years, but in recent times there has been less coming and a lot more going. When the world was still populated by hunter-gatherers , small tightly knit (联系) groups developed their own patterns of speech independent of each other. Some language experts believe that 10,000 years ago, when the world had just five to ten million people, they spoke perhaps 1,200 languages between them.

    Soon afterwards, many of those people started settling down to become farmers, and their languages too became more settled and fewer in number. In recent centuries, trade, industrialization, the development of the nation-state and the spread of universal compulsory education, especially globalization and better communications in the past few decades, all have caused many languages to disappear, and dominant languages such as English, Spanish and Chinese are increasingly taking over.

    At present, the world has about 6,800 languages. The distribution of these languages is hugely uneven. The general rule is that mild zones have relatively few languages, often spoken by many people, while hot, wet zones have lots, often spoken by small numbers. Europe has only around 200 languages; the Americas about 1,000; Africa 2,400; and Asia and the Pacific perhaps 3200, of which Papua New Guinea alone accounts for well over 800. The median number (中位数) of speakers is a mere 6,000, which means that half the world's languages are spoken by fewer people than that.

    Already well over 400 of the total of 6,800 languages are close to extinction (消亡), with only a few elderly speakers left. Pick, at random, Busum in Cameroon (eight remaining Speaker), Chiapaneco in Mexico (150), Lipan Apache in the United States (two or three) or Wadjigu in Australia (one, with a question-mark) none of these seems to have much chance of survival.

    When Casey Waletich, the director of safety and operations at the Hillsboro School District in Oregon, decided to start a campaign against bullying (欺凌）in his district, he knew he had to get the students on board.

   "We knew that this had to be a student-led effort. The days of having schools do things without the involvement of the students are over，"Mr. Waletich says.

    So he got a group of students together and asked them how they would like to do things. The resulting campaign," Rethink, Redefine, Where Do You Stand?" was launched in October 2014.

    The Hillsboro campaign is just one example of how schools nationwide are increasingly turning to students to develop-anti-bullying movements designed to not just discourage bulling, but also to encourage students to get involved.

    In 2013, some 20 percent of high school students reported experiencing bullying, according to federal data on Stop Bulling gov. The figure jumps to 28 percent when middle school students are included. Some 70 percent of young people say they have witnessed bullying.

    In response to these issues, anti-bullying campaigns in which students have a central role are being conducted across the country. From West Jordan, Utah(where students participated in a three-year character-building program to stop bullying), to Lisbon, Iowa, and Goodrich, Mich, school officials report that their students are taking ownership.

   "This year I've noticed our students are already thinking about what they need to do to make Sunset Ridge an accepting, safe environment." Said Julie Scherzinger, a guidance councilor at Sunset Ridge Middle School in West Jordan." Students come up to me and ask if anyone needs help"

   "There are many reasons why having students at the center is most

important." Says Ron Avi Astor, a professor in social development at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles." Bullying takes place when adults are absent. The kids see and hear more and can go and inform adults when they aren't there to respond immediately"

   "Teaching kids to step up when someone is being bullied teaches them how to be responsible citizens." Ron Avi Astor added.

    I must have always known reading was very important because the first memories I have as a child deal with books. There was not one night that I don't remember mom reading me a storybook by my bedside. I was extremely inspired by the elegant way the words sounded.

    I always wanted to know what my mom was reading. Hearing mom say," I can't believe what's printed in the newspaper this morning," made me want to grab it out of her hands and read it myself. I wanted to be like my mom and know all of the things she knew. So I carried around a book, and each night, just to be like her, I would pretend to be reading.

    This is how everyone learned to read. We would start off with sentences, then paragraphs, and then stories. It seemed an unending journey, but even as a six-year-old girl I realized that knowing how to read could open many doors. When mom said," The C-A-N-D-Y is hidden on the top shelf," I knew where the candy was. My progress in reading raised my curiosity, and I wanted to know everything. I often found myself telling my mom to drive more slowly, so that I could read all of the road signs we passed.

    Most of my reading through primary, middle and high school was factual reading. I read for knowledge, and to make A's on my tests. Occasionally, I would read a novel that was assigned, but I didn't enjoy this type of reading. I liked facts, things that are concrete. I thought anything abstract(抽象的) left too much room for argument.

    Yet, now that I'm growing and the world I once knew as being so simple is becoming more complex, I find myself needing a way to escape. By opening a novel, I can leave behind my burdens and enter into a wonderful and mysterious world where I am now a new character. In these worlds I can become anyone. I don't have to write down what happened or what technique the author was using when he or she wrote this. I just read to relax.

    We're taught to read because it's necessary for much of human understanding. Reading is a vital part of my life. Reading satisfies my desire to keep learning. And I've found that the possibilities that lie within books are limitless.

    Nottingham Goose (鹅) Fair started on the first Thursday in October and lasted 3 days. However, nowadays you won't find any geese there.

    The fair opened at 12: 00 on the Thursday by the Lord Mayor of Nottingham, but it has an interesting and shocking history.

    For starters, it wasn't always the largest fair in the area. And the main fair for the people of Nottingham in terms of trade and economy was the Lenton Fair held at Lenton Priory.

    In the Middle Ages the Lenton Fair overshadowed (使显得逊色) the Goose Fair in size and importance. Harrisons Calendar of Fairs for 1587 mentions the Lenton Fair but not the Goose Fair. However the Goose Fair competed with its local competitors and every year over 20, 000 geese from the Fens in Lincolnshire arrived to be sold to provide the traditional Michaelmas dish.

    It wasn't just for geese either. All kinds of things were sold at the Goose Fair: sheep, horses and cattle were also sold.

    The fair has been under threat of closure many times over the years. In 1764, they actually had cheese riots (暴乱) due to an increase of a third on the price of cheese compared with the previous year, which resulted in an attack on the stallholders (摊主) at the fair.

    By 1880 the fair was reduced to a three-day event, which started on the first Thursday of October. In 1928, the fair was moved from the market square to its present site in the forest which is far away from the city centre. Despite attempts throughout its history to prevent the fair, the income from rents paid by the stallholders is financially beneficial to the local government. So regardless of the cheese riots and the various attempts to prohibit it, Nottingham Goose Fair has survived to celebrate over eight centuries of fun.