Years 5 and 6 visit the Oxford Story Museum

The students enjoyed an exciting day out at Oxford’s Story Museum with our museum guides, Emily and James.

We particularly enjoyed the ‘Story Walk’, which was a spectacular experience accompanied by our bubbly tour guides, each pointing out the strange carvings and statues that gives Oxford its amazing history. They talked about the famous authors such as Katherine Rundell, Philip Pullman and Lewis Caroll, and told us about where they studied, what inspired them and what they saw along the way.

Our tour was packed full of amazing adventures; one being when the tour guides talked about some of the tales and mysteries surrounding Oxford, including the legend of the Lady in Grey. Story goes that there was a young lady living on Magpie Street (one of Oxford’s most historical places) who fell in love with a boy in the army. After a while it was arranged that they would be wed after the war. The young girl waited day, and night, always dressed in grey waiting for her love to return. He never did and legend has it that she still roams around on Magpie Street waiting for her love to return!

The story guides also talked about Katherine Rundell and how she loved climbing, which actually inspired one of her most famous stories, Rooftoppers. It was quite a while ago, but Katherine wasn’t just inspired by her eventful hobby; actually, what really inspired her was that one night she and her friends decided to have a party on the college roof. And that’s when she found it. Katherine had spotted something that wasn’t supposed to be there: a bottle – and that’s what inspired her. No one knows what was in the bottle or if there was in fact anything in it. That secret is with Katherine herself. The Juniors had a great time on the Story Walk and thought that it was packed full of adventures and stories to be heard.

Once back at the museum, our first stop was the Whispering Woods, where James told us a story about a boy who survived being captured and enslaved by a witch. The boy lived to tell the tale of his exciting adventures including the magic he obtained from the witch. In the woods, there are trees that tell variations of stories around the world from Africa to Ireland. We could also find interesting objects relating to the stories in glass cases inside the trees.

Next stop was the Enchanted Library that held various treasures in different rooms. There were classic themes like Winnie The Pooh and others like The Subtle Knife – a book about a knife that’s so sharp it could cut air!

We then moved onto the Treasure Chamber, which is a room that changes frequently. During our visit, it held dragon stories from all over the world. There were different stations for different activities. There was a dress up box where our friends could enjoy trying on wings and tails. There was an origami station where we could create all kinds of paper folding dragons. Our favourite was the word art section where we got to experiment with so many different dragons!

Finally, we went to our personal favourite – The Magic Common Room. In this room, we learned to improve our story writing skills in many ways. James asked us to start with a map of the most peculiar things we could imagine. Then he taught us instead of starting with a person we could start with a place, which helped us when our minds went blank. This was a really enjoyable day for all the students!