Mysterious Roman object on display

The learning team are very excited about a new, temporary, addition to the Roman displays at Lincoln Museum. The unexplained object has been the talk of the country for the last few weeks, puzzling scientists, historians and visitors alike.

Thought to date from the third or fourth century, the copper alloy, 12-sided object was found during an amateur archaeological ‘dig’ in Norton Disney near Lincoln, in summer 2023.

It is one of only 33 such dodecahedrons found in Britain, and the first to have been found in the Midlands. It is also one of the largest examples to be found, measuring around 8cm tall and weighing 245g.

Where most other examples are found damaged, or as fragments, the Norton Disney dodecahedron is complete and in remarkable condition after 1,700 years of being buried.

The purpose of these mysterious objects has been lost in the mists of time, as there are no references to them in Roman texts or depictions of them. 

Unlocking the Mysteries of Mummification

We are very excited to introduce the newest member of the Investigate Learning team – our fabulous mummification doll! Now your class can get hands on and practice embalming with our more realistic body, complete with viscera for them to carefully extract.  We’ve researched and developed this new resource to ensure it gives as immersive and accurate an experience as possible.  

We recently had the opportunity to spend time with visiting curator Mamdouh Farouk, Director at the Imhotep Museum in Egypt.  He checked through our mummification workshop and confirmed we had all the details correct and gave us lots of new information to share with you too! It was a brilliant opportunity for our team to work with an expert.

Our doll was designed and hand crafted by the very talented Ros Lorimer of Pighill Archaeological Illustration, who we have worked with on some of our other learning resources.  As well as creating the doll, she has designed a beautifully decorated cover which draws inspiration from real Ancient Egyptian tomb images.  The illustrations show elements of agricultural life and food production as well as funerary scenes, providing a wealth of talking points for budding Egyptologists.

We can’t wait to share these new resources with you and your class! Book now.

Secondary school learning across our sites

We have combined our offers for older students into one leaflet so that you can easily see the full range for History and Art examination courses or case studies. We are excited to be welcoming students for their activities this summer term!

The Power of the Sun Animation

We are excited to launch our new Fusion energy animation and are lucky to have Hannah Brown as a member of our learning team. Her animation brings to life this current environmental topic and encourages us to ponder both the past and the future! We even have a Tokamak physicist speaking on the film – very inspiring!

We are linking to our prehistoric gold artefacts on site and from November 10^th to February 20^th  we also have the British Museum Spotlight loan exhibition Gathering Light: a Bronze Age golden sun. We are going all bling and showing off the amazing Shropshire Sun Pendant!

Our prehistory workshops will include a tour of the exhibition but we thought we’d showcase the importance of the sun in this new Power of the Sun learning resource.

Science teachers (primary and secondary) will find this free resource a great introduction to this physics topic too.

We hope you enjoy it.

Hidden Lindum Colonia beneath the city

See beneath the city and journey back to Roman Lincoln. We unveiled the seven sites of Hidden Lindum Colonia last week as part of our Festival of Archaeology: Exploring local Places.

Take your students on an interactive trail of Lindum Colonia. Follow the map and explore the hidden city between The Collection Museum and Lincoln Castle.

The trail starting point is the Roman villa that was underneath The Collection Museum!

Puppies and poppies! Remembrance day 2020

With all the restrictions imposed upon us as a result of the pandemic, sadly we are not able run our wonderful Poppy Remembrance workshops this year with the fabulously talented Ruth Pigott. However after speaking to both Ruth and the celebrated poet Ash Dickinson, who many schools have worked with before, we have put together both a KS1 and KS2 workshop which are available on our Aviation Section of the Investigate website

KS1

STANLEY AND THE PURPLE POPPIES

Head over and meet Stanley, Ruth Pigott’s adorable puppet dog, who will tell you all about the bravery of animals during times of conflict and make your own Stanley puppet!

KS2

LEST WE FORGET…

Meet inspirational poet Ash Dickinson and get some tips on how to write and enjoy poetry. Ash has recorded a very special video poetry workshop which will help you to reflect on the sacrifices made for us during wartime to be able to live the lives we do today

New WW2 learning resources launched

Aviation Learning have just launched a series of new learning resources all based around WW2

Do you know how many sweets you would be able to have on a week’s ration? What might you use to make cakes with instead of sugar? How to make your own plant pot and grow your own vegetables?

Find out the answers to these and many more by looking out for our new WW2 worksheets in the Aviation Learning resources section.

Investigate summer update, we want you back!

Learning Experiences at our sites
We are looking forward to the time when we can welcome you all back for our learning workshops and guided learning sessions at the Lincoln heritage sites (Lincoln Castle, The Collection and Museum of Lincolnshire Life).

Over the summer we will be finalising our plans for this in order to ensure your safety.
Keep an eye on our website for updates.

Creative Arts
Investigate Learning have recently become an Arts Award centre and we are busy planning our new offers. Please contact us if you would like to discuss how we can support your pupils in gaining their Arts Awards.

As an Artsmark Partner we work with many schools and colleges to support their creative arts journey.

Museums and Schools Aviation Learning Project
Our Aviation learning team continue to offer their exciting range of workshops across the Aviation sites of Lincolnshire. Schools will be invited to join in with both digital and onsite activities, as well as offering the Discover at Home Arts Award.

Outreach Loans Kits – Investigate Learning on Tour
Our loans kits are available in September (new T & Cs for Covid-19) and we will also be launching some new ones in the Autumn. These will focus upon interpretation skills and designing your own exhibitions.

These larger kits are based upon topics such as Prehistory, Early Medieval and Creative Arts (four new Arts kits).

Look out for the launch in the Autumn!

Digital Learning
Our digital learning resources from lockdown are available on the site websites below. We are looking to further develop our digital offer and would be interested to hear from you regarding the areas you would like us to support and focus upon where we can. This could lead to the development of project packs for gallery tours and Arts awards or something else…

We are open to ideas for the development of our digital support activities linked our sites and collections! Let us know how we might help.

Archaeology Festival going digital!

Our 8th annual Archaeology Festival is going digital this year. Why not get involved in our events and activities!

See the festival details for 27^th July to 1^st August on The Collection website.

Four new Creative Arts kits

The Investigate learning team have been reformatting all of their outreach kits and will have four new Creative Arts kits – with canvases and other arts artefacts alongside the history kits.

One of the new Creative Arts kits being developed for the Autumn will have a Lincoln theme and this learning resource invites you to have a go at landscape drawing/painting.

Here we have Turner’s watercolour painting from our collection to inspire you to get creative! We will be launching the new offer over the summer so watch this space!

Thank you to The Mighty Creatives for their help and support for this new project.