York’s ‘CU in the City’ events – From superheroes to super snails!

Good afternoon all,

Last week, we brought you the first of a two-part post from York CU's Lucy Horsman. In that post, Lucy told us all about some of the activities made available to children at York's 'CU in the City' event last year. This time around...well, the title says it all really! Take it away, Lucy!:

York Children’s University were busy in late November running seven ‘CU in the City’ family learning events and in our first blog post we covered drama, Tansy beetles and science! For the remaining events we were joined by our partners from the University of York’s Psychology Department, Flamingo Land Resorts, and student-led creative writing group Inkwell.

The Psychology department hosted ‘Did I really see that?’ where neither children nor adults could believe their eyes! With hands-on experiments and mind-boggling illusions, the session really brought learning to life. A popular hit with the children was the magic chair that made the grown-ups shrink and children grow!

We had another evening of creative-writing fun with Inkwell, and as usual it went down a storm. Our resident superhero Ellie was on hand to help children make up their very own superhero stories and the adults even had a go as well! It was lovely to see parents and children working together, proving that leaning doesn’t stop, no matter what your age. One parent mentioned, “When the children do similar things in school I don’t get to see it, so it’s lovely to be a part of their learning”. Seven year old Rose also commented how she found the creative writing “really exciting” and can’t wait to get writing more.

Our final session was hosted by one of our newest partners, Flamingo Land. A huge range of artefacts were explored, from skulls to skins to real life mini-beasts! We tackled all sorts of questions from ‘why do snakes shed their skins?’ to ‘why do deer have antlers?’ in a quiz, and some children even had a go at handling giant African snails and giant stick insects – it was not for the faint-hearted!

Our CU in the City events are increasingly popular in York and allow staff at York CU a rare opportunity to meet some of the families involved in the scheme. Their enthusiasm for learning is infectious and it makes us want to run more and more events! Next up will be some events in June to tie in with the University of York’s ‘Festival of Ideas’, themed this year around Tick-Tock! Watch this space!

To find out more about York CU and their fantastic Learning Destinations, head to their website.

CU next time,

Ian