ABSTRACT
As Early Years coordinator at the museum to lead on the redevelopment of an existing gallery, Nature Discovery, for children under 5, which would act as a gateway to the rest of the museum and would use the collections to support a connection to nature in an urban setting. The context for this was prompted by research studies indicating that contact with nature is important for children’s development, as it supports creativity, wellbeing, problem solving and could potentially support empathy with nature in adulthood. Running, jumping, chasing, crawling and climbing are important nonverbal characteristics of young children making meaning of and communicating about their museum experiences. For example, an 18-month-old child repeatedly climbed up and down the stairs in the Natural History gallery. The phase of “lighting up” is used to describe how the physical spaces and objects “become more or less salient to the children”.
