Special educational activities

Access to cultural heritage is a fundamental human right, while taking part in the cultural life is a prerequisite for social inclusion and social participation. Museums are places of high cultural importance, with significant educational and social aspects. Therefore, are by definition accessible to all and welcoming to all visitors.

The Natural History Museum of the Lesvos Petrified Forest is friendly to people with special needs and skills and driven by its mission is a place of knowledge, education, inspiration and entertainment for all. In particular, the Museum designs and implements educational activities for groups of people with visual impairments, mobility difficulties or other difficulties.

Educational visits

Each educational visit is adapted to the needs and requirements of the participating group and therefore each program is designed before the visit in close collaboration of the Educational Programs Department of the Museum with the groups.

Through experiential activities the participants become familiar with the collections of the Museum. Special information is also provided regarding the creation of the Petrified Forest, the variety of plant fossils, the uniqueness of the monument and the earth’s natural processes, such as earthquakes and volcanoes.

Each educational visit could include a special experiential activity organized after consultation. Touching, exploring, playing are some of the means used by the participants in order to discover the secrets of the Petrified Forest and the evidence it gives us about the evolution of the plants and the Aegean 20 million years ago until today.

Educational program ‘’Discovering the Petrified Forest of Lesvos through touch’’

The Natural History Museum of Lesvos Petrified Forest designs and implements educational programs and activities without exclusions. In this context, the museum’s special educational programs offer the opportunity to get acquainted with the Petrified Forest of Lesvos, a unique natural monument of 20 million years.

The program ‘’Discovering the Petrified Forest of Lesvos through touch’’ gives the opportunity to people who are blind or visually impaired to explore this unique, protected natural monument by touching important findings-exhibits. For visually impaired people, touch is the primary way to acquire information or access a museum exhibit. For others, tactile experiences help to complete their mental image of an object. Thus, it has been realized that the possibility of touching the findings-exhibits is for everyone a new way of approaching and interpreting the museum collections, enriching their museum experience.

Participants have the opportunity to touch and feel fossilizied trunks, twigs and branches as well as leaf imprints. Through active touching everyone can feel in an unprecedented way the surfaces, the characteristic features and the textures of the findings-exhibits. The aim of the program is for people with visual impairments to have an understanding of the characteristic features of each fossil by touching them and, in combination with the information they will receive for each exhibit, to create a complete mental picture of the plant world that was fossilized 20 million years ago.

The program includes:

• Verbal presentation-narration of the Petrified Forest and the processes that led to its fossilization.

• Information on the plant species of the Petrified Forest as well as on the species to which each exhibit belongs and the area that was found.

• Touching each exhibit and describing its special characteristics.

Every educational program at the Museum for groups of people with special difficulties is an exciting journey, full of unique experiences.

Let’s live it together!