Discover Friday Fledglings at The MERL

What is Friday Fledglings?

Friday Fledglings revolves around outdoor learning inspired by the themes of The MERL’s collections.

The home for the sessions is The MERL garden. The Fledglings enjoy the same choice of activities each week, with seasonal and topical additions introduced in each session.

This continuity provides security for the children and their caregivers, and allows a large space to be safe and predictable, as well as filled with excitement, adventure, and creativity! We usually have around fifty families joining us at each session.

This link between the indoor and outdoor environment at the Museum feels seamless to visitors. Fledgling families will often stay outside in the garden for the duration of the session, and sometimes long into the afternoon, bringing a picnic with them or buying lunch from the café. But the children know the galleries very well. Many have favourite parts in each space.

Friday Fledglings has always used natural materials for our crafts as much as possible and we constantly challenge ourselves to share ideas for sustainable living with the families. Resources are carefully chosen for functionality, with the view that they will be used in as many ways as possible.

How do you communicate complex ideas to families and young children?

Towards the end of every session, we have a snack, story and singsong. All of our stories link to the weekly themes and revolve around our character, Little Mouse. This activity lets us bring together the themes of the week, and explain some of the wider messages of the session in terms that the children can understand, all while providing a valuable connection point for families, volunteers, and staff alike.

In one session, we encouraged the Fledglings to explore the cover of a book by Vita Sackville-West held in The MERL library, In Your Garden, and use this beautiful design as inspiration to imagine what Sackville-West might do if she were designing and writing about a garden in the 2020s.

Whilst the children might be too young to appreciate the challenges of Vita Sackville-West’s life (of being a woman unable to inherit her ancestral home), they are able to understand that everyone is important and deserves to have a part and voice in decisionmaking and action for the future. They are able to empathise with Vita’s love of gardening and her role as a designer, steward and champion for the green spaces that she cared for and left for future generations.

We have treasured these weekly meetings more than ever after the pandemic, which caused us to become so cautious about participating in things that truly make us part of a community: the sharing of food, the opportunity to sit alongside and talk with another individual that is experiencing many of the same life struggles or joys as ourselves, and the chance to have a shared experience based around the awe of being in a natural space.

As children are natural gardeners, we also encourage the Fledglings to plant flowers and bulbs in their own dedicated raised bed. Having this amenity enables them to leave a mark on the garden, enhance the enjoyment of other visitors (both people and animals), and often gives them a harvest that they can share and take home. Fledgling families often tell each other about how the produce they harvested was cooked, and what was particularly delicious!

If you are a parent or caregiver living in Reading with a young child, consider joining us at Friday Fledglings! Book your place online each week via our Friday Fledglings page.