Learning about history from a museum or activity can provide memorable experiences and provoke imagination. Simonne Pace asked Heritage Malta to tell her why they think children learn more by being out and about.

A treasure hunt activity on prehistoric life at Tarxien Temples targeted at Form 1 students.

With so much heritage at our fingertips, instilling a love for history and culture in our children shouldn’t be a difficult task. However, exposure and learning need to be ingrained in everyday life.

Children should know about Malta’s history, how people lived in the past, what they ate and how they cooked, how they dressed, how men proposed to women in the old days, how Malta developed over the years and what it looked like before. The list is endless.

Children should not only learn about these interesting facts from a book or from a theoretical lesson in class. A visit to a museum every now and then can offer so much more. Museums are places full of rich experiences. Inside a museum, visitors, especially children, are given an opportunity to enrich their knowledge, relive the past and let their imagination run wild.

With this aim in mind, through programmes earmarked for schoolchildren and a number of new projects, Heritage Malta and the Department of Curriculum Management are on a mission to expand their activities and reach as many children as possible.

At the moment it is working on short, audiovisual documentaries for children that can be taken into the classroom. The first series will cover Malta’s prehistory: life in the temples. These documentaries will eventually cover the different periods of Malta’s history. Interactive material will be available in a ‘loan box’ which teachers can borrow from Heritage Malta and make use of in class.

Senior executive Vanessa Ciantar, who is in charge of educational and outreach activities at Heritage Malta, told The Sunday Times that the response from children and schools has been extremely positive, to the extent that it cannot cope with the numbers.

“We don’t want children to look at a cultural activity merely as a visit to the museum but as a chance to continue building on their knowledge of a particular subject being studied at school.”

Introduced last year, this programme now features both new and exciting activities directly linked to the National Curriculum Framework (2012).

“Children are taken out of the classroom setting to take part in a historical or cultural activity they already know something about or would have heard of in class. So besides the element of fun, we are supplying the child with new tools to be able to delve into new pastures,” Ms Ciantar said.

“Rather than going round visiting an entire museum, we want children to focus on a particular skill or a specific period in history.”

Another incentive by Heritage Malta is a programme for students with different abilities. A two-week pilot project, launched last year and conducted with the Helen Keller School in Qrendi, targeted the St Paul’s Catacombs in Rabat.

Rather than going round visiting an entire museum, we want children to focus on a particular skill or a specific period in history

“This year we plan to take the same group of students to the Maritime Museum for a new experience, while we are offering the St Paul’s Catacombs programme to another school. You can tell that the students are extremely receptive to these cultural activities.”

Heritage Malta also hopes to extend this package to Core Curriculum Programme students who come from more challenging backgrounds. “The activity for these children tends to be more interactive and more hands-on rather than involving just reading and writing skills.”

Heritage Malta has created a new programme for 12-year-olds running throughout the scholastic year, which will cover 10 visits to various museums all over Malta. Visits include a tour of St Elmo, which will focus on parts of the fort hit during World War II: children will be shown where the very first bomb fell, where the first people were hurt and the section of the museum that tackles World War II.

“The activity involves us giving the students primary sources which they then have to analyse, interpret and provide their own research for.”

Together with the Department of Early Years at the University of Malta, Heritage Malta has introduced a programme of activities carried out with students who will be graduating as teachers this year.

“Children from various schools were taken to Ħaġar Qim and the Natural History Museum in Rabat. The teachers-to-be came up with the activities and we were there to guide them along. We also got in touch with various schools. Every day we covered a different activity. There were 15 sessions in all,” Ms Ciantar said.

“Children should be exposed to culture more and from a younger age. You’d be amazed what they come up with once they discover a new perspective. The activity suddenly becomes one big adventure.”

As an incentive for parents to expose children to heritage from an early age, Heritage Malta has introduced a membership card for a child and guardian to enter museums. Children go in for free while two accompanying adults pay half price.

Outreach activities for parents and children, including heritage trails, pottery sessions, tool-making and treasure hunts, are organised regularly by Heritage Malta on weekends between November and May – “all linked with history and heritage, mingled with fun and a different spin. The children are also happily out and about.”

Heritage Malta has also been producing books for children for the past two years. It has so far come up with two and is now working on its third one focusing on Valletta to coincide with the capital’s 450th anniversary celebration.

The very first book by Heritage Malta – L-Ewwel 35 Miljun Sena ta’ Ħajti – tied to Heritage Malta’s 100 Objects exhibition – is about Malta’s history, its first 35 million years, and is written in the form of a diary, seen through the eyes of Malta as a young and impressionable girl.

The second book, L-Assedju l-Kbir Farka Farka, celebrates the anniversary of the Great Siege. The three books are in Maltese and English and feature the latest and most reliable information.

Heritage Malta, together with the Department of Curriculum Management, is currently digitising the book Malta – the Great Story of a Small Island Nation through 100 Objects. This interactive e-book will be distributed free to teachers who can then use it as a resource during class.

www.heritagemalta.org