Did you know April is World Autism Month? We would like to welcome neurodivergent children and their families to drop into The Wonder Cabinet for a relaxed morning visit in April. Meet with Educators and touch some exciting animal skulls and teeth from the handling collection.

Saturday, 20th April 2024
10:00am – 11:00am

• A relaxed morning visit to The Wonder Cabinet is a short activity for children with their accompanying adults that takes between 5 - 10 minutes.
• The Wonder Cabinet is located towards the middle of the Museum on the ground floor. 
• You will be greeted by two smiling Museum Educators, Geraldine and Ciara, at The Wonder Cabinet. 
• They will have on a table some replicas or models of animal skulls from the handling collection. Unusual and common animals are part of the display, such as a saber tooth cat, Amur tiger, chimpanzee, grey wolf and sheep.
• The Wonder Cabinet has a projector and screen and a simple PowerPoint presentation showing the skulls and animals will be playing on a loop. 
• You will be encouraged by Geraldine and Ciara to touch them, but only if you want. 
• During the activity the Educator will show and tell you some stories about the handling collections. If you like, you can ask a question. 
• After the pop-up talk you will be offered, by another Educator, an activity sheet to complete at the Museum called My Favourite Animal. You can do the activity sheet with your accompanying adult. With them you find your favourite animal on dipslay in the Museum cases and use the activity sheet to describe and sketch it. To see what the activity sheet looks like click on My Favourite Animal.  
• You will be offered a pencil to do the activity sheet.
• You will also be given a small Museum spinning top as a momento to take home. 
• Please visit the 3D Virtual Tour to explore the ground floor gallery before your visit. This virtual tour was created in 2010, and so it is a little bit old and some things are missing from it, like The Wonder Cabinet.
• Please visit The Wonder Cabinet to learn more about it and what it displays. 
• Only the ground floor of the Museum is open to the public. 
• Accessibility toilets are available at Reception, on the left as you enter. 
• Please bring along any PPE that you want e.g. ear defenders. the Museum galleries can get very noisy but it is usually quieter at this time in the morning. 
• There is no shop onsite. 
• Scroll down to the very end of this page to see a picture of what the outside of the Museum looks like. 

This is a first come, first serve event and no booking required. Wheelchair accessible.

If you have any further questions please contact educationnh@museum.ie