About the Sessions 

School Visits

If you are a UK based school, wishing to visit the Museum with your class, please use the booking form to make a request. Please note that the Museum is closed on Mondays.

There is no charge for our standard school sessions, but donations are welcomed to support the Museum learning programme (recommended donation of £3 per child).

About the Session 

Discover how the Fitzwilliam Museum grew from an idea to what you see today in this new session designed for the Museum's 200th birthday celebrations.

Duration: 2 hours

About the Session 

From holidays at the seaside, to bugs and beetles finding food and soldiers marching into battle – we think about many different types of journey as we move around the museum.

Duration: 2 hours

About the Session 

Explore the museum collections playfully through stories, puzzles and quests in a selection of sessions for children in the Foundation Stage. Suitable for reception classes, nurseries, playgroups, preschools, Children's Centres etc.

About the Session 

Using the collections housed at the Whipple Museum and Whipple Library, this taught session focuses on the impact and legacy of the theory of evolution by natural selection. It will also provide students with an insight into how science works, including Charles Darwin’s engagement with the wider scientific community and the observational basis of his theory.

About the Session 

Students will be able to explore how revolutionary discoveries affected the development of new medical and anatomical knowledge. They will study the tools of the medical trade from the Renaissance to the 19th century, revealing the impact of key figures including Andreas Vesalius and important techniques such as trepanation. In collaboration with the Whipple library, they will then be encouraged to investigate and analyse important medical texts from different eras and make conclusions about what influenced their authors and illustrators.

About the Session 

This session will motivate students to think deeply about the science of the everyday – specifically why and how we see colour. Using prisms and optics and looking at the work of Isaac Newton and James Clerk Maxwell, students will understand how interaction between light, material and the human eye result in colourful creations.

Duration: 90 minutes

Session Format: 30 minute taught session + 30 minute handling and/or craft activity + 30 minute self exploration

About the Session 

From musical instruments to vibrations, and from sound waves to the inner ear, students will use objects from the collection understand how sound is made, travels and is heard. Through hands-on and observational investigation, they will explore how humans have created musical and scientific instruments enabling us to make music and communicate through the ages.

Duration: 90 minutes

Session Format: 30 minute taught session + 30 minute worksheet + 30 minute handling and investigation

About the Session 

Via gallery investigation, source analysis and discussion, and students will get a glimpse of science from the diverse perspectives of colonial forces and native peoples. After being led around our Astronomy and Empire exhibition by a museum teacher, students will be given sources and objects in order to prepare presentations on three or four case studies exhibited.

Duration: 90 minutes

Session Format: 30 minute taught session + 30 minute case study preparation + 30 presentation and discussion

About the Session 

This gallery taught session explores the different ways in which people in the past have prepared their dead. Funerary rituals, grave goods, and ancestor veneration are just a few of the topics discussed while students see first-hand burial artefacts from the Museum’s collection. 

Duration: 1.5 hours

Session Format: A museum teacher will lead the first 45 minutes of the session.  Students will then have a chance to independently investigate the galleries and conduct their own object research.