Did you try this at school too? Photo credit: shoots by Mycatkins (License)

Name: Sophia

Age: 5

From: Bicester

Story: We took some cress seeds. We had two groups in the light and two groups in the dark. One of the groups in the light and one in the dark got watered. The group that was in the light and had water grew. The group in the light without water grew but it was yellow. The groups in the dark didn’t grow.

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Age: 7

Occupation: School

Object: Flower growing

Story: At school I planted a seed into a plant pot and watered it every day. It grew into a sunflower.

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Prismatic Binoculars, c. 1914 (Inv. 34066) Do you have binoculars like this pair from the Museum?

Name:  Alice

Age: 21

Occupation: Student

From: Essex

Object: Binoculars

Story: When I was a child I used to love looking at the birds in our birdbath out of the kitchen window. One year my mum brought me a pair of binoculars and ‘Bill Oddie’s Book of British Birds’. With my new binoculars I was able to look at the birds far more closely, using the binoculars to magnify their plumage and features. This enabled me to look them up in my book and identify what kinds of birds they were – what species, their sex and their age. Though it was mainly starlings and sparrows I once saw a woodpecker and even advanced to visiting the local country park to look at wading birds.

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Colour Photograph of Part of a Flower Bed, by Sarah Angelina Acland, c.1915 (Inv.18849)

Name: Isabelle

Age: 7

Occupation: School

From: Guildford

Object: Beanstalk

Story: In reception I planted a beanstalk seed and I watered it every day until a small stalk popped out of the ground. The next day the stalk had grown a tiny bit more than the last day. Every day it grew a tiny bit more until beans grew out if the stalk and I got to take the beanstalk home.

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Photograph of Beetle on a Leaf, early 20th Century (Inv. 31584). Do you think Freddie’s beetle was anything like this?

Name: Freddie

Age: 5

Occupation: School

Object: Beetle

Story: Yesterday in a bucket in the garden was a beetle. We thought it had a green grape in its moth. But we noticed the green was, we think, its head. We emptied the bucket and photographed it. We are going to send the picture to the Museum of Natural History.

Like Freddie, you can send your questions to museums which specialise in that area and they will try their best to answer!

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Compass, 18th Century (Inv. 35051) and Map of Switzerland, Early 19th Century (Inv. 10424). Do you think you would be able to navigate with these?

Name: Andrew

Age: 22

Occupation: Student

From: Oxford

Subject: Map and Compass

Story: I grew up in a family of outdoor enthusiasts–backpacking, hiking, and camping were common activities of family bonding. My parents’ love of the natural world rubbed off on me: among my fondest childhood memories are my family’s weekend backpacking trips through the mountains of the American Pacific Northwest. During my venturings into nature, I became acquainted with the combined use of maps and compasses as instruments of navigation. I learned how to align maps with landmarks, triangulate my position on a map, and orient myself within a given terrain using a compass. Even more, I found the joy in this form of navigation–in tracking the progress made and distance gained during a long outing. In the near future I look forward to trying orienteering as a sport, which involves using these same tools to navigate towards a destination in an unfamiliar landscape.

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