I'm not complaining, but there were over 300 children in schools parties at Normanby Park today - most of them KS1, plus a couple of groups of older children and young adults from special schools!
They were very good, and the teachers were very well organised, but even so the various groups kept getting in each others' way (lots of polite 'excuse mes' and standings aside), and there were long, long queues for the loos!
I had to deal with just shy of 60 of them (29 year 1 in the morning and 28 year 2 in the afternoon) as we did the Trug to Table workshop in the walled garden. Hilary and Sarah had year one and two groups in the laundry and the hall respectively in the morning, and then the schools had self guides in the afternoon, as my groups had back to back, and the other schools were all on self guides.
Fortunately for everyone's sanity the three infant schools had different coloured uniforms so that the school near Lincoln was in green, the Hull school was in red, and the ones from the school near Driffied were in blue. Unfortunately (for this reason only) it was a lovely warm day and most of the children had taken off their distinctive sweatshirts and left them in the lunch rooms; for all other reasons I am very happy that the rain held off and it only started spitting around 3.30ish after the children had all gone.
I wonder, if the Museum Education Service was allowed to give small discounts for parties booking (and paying) well in advance for 'off peak' weeks, would we still get as many flocking in at the end of the summer term?
