Since the opening of Melbourne Museum's "Day in Pompeii" exhibition, the Discovery Centre has had a Roman flavour, featuring ancient coins, gladiator helmets and books about Rome. Along with a "coin trail" in which children answer questions about gods and emperors, there's an activity table set up for coin-rubbing at which the profiles of Claudius, Nero, Trajan and Caracalla emerge beneath the crayons of visitors of all ages (but mainly the young): 

Photo: Philip Thiel  Source: Museum Victoria

 This fun activity has proven so tempting that some of our own staff-members have been spotted having a rub - in disguise...

Photo: Philip Thiel  Source: Museum Victoria

Back in April this year the Museum ran a children's activity celebrating the launch of the new Dinosaur Walk exhibition where kids could make their very own dinosaur masks. Discovery Centre staff member Jo was particularly impressed with this activity and had a go herself - her results are well-documented in my earlier post, Bad-Jo-Jo-A-Saurus.

As the mask-making activity went down so well with both Jo and the kids, a similar activity (among many others) was developed for the recent winter school holidays to celebrate the opening of the blockbuster Melbourne Winter Masterpieces exhibition A Day in Pompeii, where kids were able to construct their own Roman gladiator helmets.

Once again, the activity proved popular with both the kids and the staff - witness below Discovery Centre volunteer staff member Susan, eagerly awaiting the thumbs-up or thumbs-down from the Emperor...

Photo: Meg Lomax  Source: Museum Victoria

Photo: Philip Thiel  Source: Museum Victoria

Melbourne Museum has launched a new exhibition, A Day in Pompeii, and the Discovery Centre is adapting accordingly, highlighting books about Rome and volcanoes, offering a coin rubbing activity for kids. Making space for the coins took a bit of reshuffling, in the centre, including the relocation of our heritage dinosaur statuettes from one room to another. Tertiary placement student Michael had no idea that his time with us would involve such labour! 

Photo: Philip Thiel  Source: Museum Victoria

Much to my horror, two eager budding arachnologists visited the Discovery Centre this week to find more information about TARANTULAS. (May I just clarify that my horror was inspired by the tarantulas and not the lovely boys).

Bruno and Otto, on holiday from Hobart, had visited the Bugs Alive! exhibition in the Science & Life Gallery and were keen to find out more about spiders and other bugs. In addition to the pile of books we were able to find in the centre's library, I bravely directed them to the Spider's Parlour website and told them about the tarantula webcam, where online spectators can keep an eye on the Museum's tarantulas, and even watch them feed every week.

But even better than that, Luke from the Live Exhibits department came to talk to the boys in the centre, and he kindly brought with him a tarantula skin. It turns out that tarantulas can shed their entire skin in one piece as they grow.

Bruno and Otto were fascinated, touching and inspecting the skin, and picking Luke's brain for more information about the animals he looks after - I stayed safely behind my desk...

Photo: Meg Lomax  Source: Museum Victoria

Today I took a phone-call from an ant-collector interested in sourcing specimens from Melbourne Museum's Bugs Alive! exhibition. Now, we weren't able to offer him any live insects, but we did have a good discussion about ants in which I learned about a tool called a "pooter" which is used by humans to dislodge ants from their nests with the help of strategically-positioned (straw-like!) tubes. 

Eerie, isn't it? But then I learnt that Museum Victoria staff have developed a so-called "Super Pooter" which hooks one of these things up to a vacuum cleaner for heavy-duty scouring. Whoosh!