EUREKA - THE NATIONAL CHILDRENS MUSEUM
EUREKA
We’ve been wanting to go to Eureka for ages. Situated in Halifax, it offers the promise of loads of interactive, educational fun for children. Sounds good! It’s about an hour and a half away from us and we went by train in the end to make the journey a bit more interesting. This worked very well as Eureka is directly next to Halifax train station.
Eureka did not disappoint, in fact it exceeded my expectations. In the entrance hall is a working Archimedes screw. I know about the concept of the Archimedes screw in that it enables water to go uphill, but I admit, I never really understood how that worked. Seeing it in action it all became clear – this was my Eureka moment! The child was also quite fascinated by it. Awesome, we’ve been there 2 minutes and have already learnt something. It’s already worth the trip, and it just got better and better.
There are lots of different areas to go at, such as the ‘Living and Working Together’ bit near the entrance where they have an operational bank, supermarket and garage where you can open the safe in the vaults, fill a car up with petrol, do some shopping, check out roadworks and the most exciting bit for The Child, the pneumatic tube, where you fill up the plastic capsule with money and put it in the plastic tube and then watch it whiz up in the ceiling round the corner and back down into the bank.
On to the Spark Gallery, where at the moment they have a digiPlaySpace exhibition (on until Easter 2018 apparently) which was The Child’s favourite area. Packed with things of interest such as the mesmerising ‘Virtual Growth’ screen where the beams of ‘living light’ trace around you, and the ‘Room Racers’ where you can drive virtual reality cars around objects and shoot the other cars and the screen which you can dance in front of where a big blob mimics your actions and so much more. So much fun.
The ‘All About Me’ section was also very interesting where you could learn about your body and how things work and visit the dentists and the doctors and there was also very cool robot in there who spoke and interacted with The Child.
We were now hungry and thirsty and in need of some refreshment. There is one cafe and a few picnic areas. We had not brought provisions, so headed to the cafe. The cafe was busy and, other than children's lunch packs (sandwich, crisps, cookie, apple and drink), the food was to order rather than ready made. I had to queue for quite a while just to pay for The Child’s lunch pack...I would suggest either get to the Cafe super early or take a packed lunch.
Once refreshed and restored, we headed off to the ‘Sound Space’ area which was also very interesting where we learnt about how sound travels and how we hear things and bits where you could create sounds. Just enough time to pop back into the digiPlaySpace for a quick go on the virtual reality cars and then back to the train for our journey home. Was it a fun day out? Yes! Do we want to go again? Absolutely.
Eureka gets a big tick from me, and a big tick from The Child ✔️✔️
Useful Information:
There is a picnic area inside near the entrance and outside there is a train which you can sit in for packed lunches. The train station is only a few minutes walk from Eureka.
Links:
Eureka : www.eureka.org.uk/