Enjoy storytelling sessions throughout the day with the wonderful Marion Leeper, get creative with river-inspired crafts, follow exciting trails, and help build a giant junk-modelled Ouse Monster in the museum garden. 

Collect your free activity passport and earn a stamp from each venue to earn a prize! 

Take to the water with special river trips offered by the St Ives Electric Boat Company, departing from The Waits. These boat rides will be available at a reduced cost for the day – tickets will be on sale from The Norris Museum. 

Create 3D animals, birds, and plants using natural and recycled materials like twigs, small branches, cardboard, and plenty of imagination. 

Take home your creation and celebrate the wild side of the Fens!

There must be at least one adult per table. Tickets numbers include adults - making their own creations!

Aimed at children aged 8 years and up. Booking essential.

 

This event is part of Summer at the Museums 2025.

Enjoy story time with these marvellous mammoth tales and handle a real mammoth tusk and tooth. 

Make your own woolly mammoth puppet and create muddy mammoth art using sticks and mud. 

Search for mammoths and explore more books and games in the museum garden.

Aimed at children aged 3+ but everyone is welcome. One accompanying adult to every three children required. Booking essential.

 

This event is part of Summer at the Museums 2025.

 

Discover a different gallery trail each week from Thursday 24 July to Saturday 30 August at the Norris Museum in St Ives.

Complete each week to earn a variety of stickers to fill your summer sticker book – free!

The museum is open 10am to 4pm, Monday to Saturday.

 

This event is part of Summer at the Museums 2025.

Step into the sandals of the young athletes from the classical past and join the Great Greek Gymnasium. It's a fun-filled family event exploring the world of ancient sports.

Discover how the ancient Greek gymnasium was more than just a training ground - it was also a place of learning, a little similar to a school today, Try you hand ancient sports and get creative with sporty crafts. Get the whole family involved and play, learn and explore together.

 

A digital alarm that you have programmed to wake you up will be so cool (at least you won't be irritated when it won't let you sleep in!). Learn how to code the micro:bit to become a light-sensitive wake-up alarm. And, if your curtains are drawn, put it under a lamp with a timer and you're still good to go!

No previous experience is required, just an interest in making tech do cool things!

Build yourself a pocket-sized, hand-held ‘brain’ game that can keep you occupied for hours while testing your focus and memory skills.

No electronics experience is required, although you will need a steady hand to assemble the components and use the tools.

This is a great workshop aimed at children aged 9 years and above. All under 14's must be accompanied by a responsible adult.

Booking essential.

 

In this talk, developer, geek, and digital archaeologist, Steven Goodwin, breaks down the very first program ever written to explain what it does and how it works. He covers the background of Ada and Charles Babbage (the father of computing who designed both the difference and analytical engines), and goes on to simulate the first program in an easy-to-understand manner.

He finishes up with a discussion on the controversy surrounding her involvement in computing, aiming to answer the question once and for all - "Was she really the first programmer?"

In this fun and hands-on workshop, participants will create their very own cube-shaped robot named Q-B. Using 3D-printed parts, an LCD screen for the robot’s expressive face, and a powerful yet tiny Raspberry Pi Pico as the brain, students will bring Q-B to life from the ground up. 

Back in the mid 1980s, a huge project by the BBC took a snapshot of life in the UK. Using thousands of children up and down the country, they gathered information, and took photographs of their home town and villages, which were then sent to a central archive to be digitally converted.

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