Our loans boxes for learning are now available to book. We have updated the way our loans box offer works in order to keep students, teachers and Museum staff safe.

Changes following impact of COVID-19:

• A minimum 72 hour quarantine period is in place for all specimens when they are returned to the Museum.
• Museum staff follow a strict hygiene routine to minimise risks created when boxes are collected from and returned to the Museum.

We ask teachers to:

• Please DO NOT try to clean or sanitise the specimens. The nature of these natural materials make them difficult to clean effectively, making quarantine the best option.
• Sanitiser and water will cause damage to the specimens. Please do not use these on the specimens themselves. The plastic case may be cleaned where needed.
• Please follow your own school policy when sharing the boxes between classes/bubbles, taking care to avoid cleaning the specimens directly and quarantining for at least 72 hours between uses.

Our sustainability-themed box helps you to explore this vast topic with your class. Think together about different materials and their impact on the environment, or take a closer look at the animal specimens include, exploring what we can learn about the animal kingdom to help us live more sustainably.

This box covers curriculum topics such as human impact, food chains, change in environments, materials, and identity and place.

This loans box hopes to help students engage with wildlife in their school grounds. It contains a wildlife camera, which triggers to record video when it detects movement. It also has night vision, which means it can be left outside to record the animals that visit the school when no one is normally looking.

You will receive full instructions for setting up the camera and looking at the footage, as well as guidance on how to upload your sightings and share them with us. A  resource pack filled with curriculum-linked activities accompanies the box and helps you to integrate your findings into lesson plans, supporting subjects ranging from Science and Maths to English and Art. While this pack has been created with KS2 in mind, both Primary and Secondary school students can enjoy engaging with the wildlife camera and many activities are adaptable.

To view footage that has already been collected by schools please follow the link below. After using the loans box, your own camera trap highlights can be shared here too:

Camera Trap footage collected by schools

All footage is free from copyright and available to use by any interested party.
 

This loans box resource uses a range of shells and invertebrate specimens to inspire learning in the classroom, with the potential to cover a range of cross-curricular topics such as habitats, adaptation, and grouping, literacy, maths and geometry.

This loans box resource uses a range of skeleton and skull specimens to inspire observational learning. The activities are made with teachers in mind, and can easily be woven into your lessons. The skeletons box can be used to demonstrate topics such as adaptation and movement, classification, maths and geometry.

Our  teeth box uses a variety of animal teeth types to help you teach about adaptation, feeding, and classification. Our accompanying teachers pack provides activity ideas to help you get the most out of your loans box, pointing to cross-curriculum links with geometry and art.

Our skulls loans box uses a range of animal skull specimens to encourage interactive learning in the classroom, with links to adaptation, feeding and classification.  The accompanying teacher’s pack provides activity ideas to inspire your pupils, with cross-curriculum links between art, science and literacy.

The bag contains a story following the life and experiences of a baby blackbird as it explores the world for the first time. Illustrated with bright, bold images, each page contains instructions and recommendations on which sensory item to use from within the bag and what to do with it. This resource is available to all schools, and has been designed with children or young people with special educational or access needs in mind.

This giant floor game helps you to explore the consequences of habitat change in a fun and engaging way. Developed as part of the Across the Continents project, your students will discover the impact we can have on the natural world, on species survival, and how we can manage change in a way that limits the loss of biodiversity.

With differentiated versions for KS2, Upper KS2 and KS3.

Not able to collect this game from the Museum? Create your own with our free DIY guide here: Tabletop Habitat Game

This loan box has been created to trigger the imagination of KS3 pupils in Art class. Beautiful, tactile, translucent specimens are accompanied by specially designed educational resources to copy and use in class. Each group of specimens has dedicated exercises to challenge the skills of your pupils, History of Art trails to explore, useful vocabulary to help name parts of the specimen and some fun facts to learn. Arts exploration and experimentation from Insects, Shells, Feathers and Skeletons in one box!