Case studies

Using the 'Home Sweet Home session

Written in conjunction with a year three teacher from Hollybrook Junior School

The Milestones KS2 Victorians session 'Home Sweet Home' is designed to support the National Curriculum unit of work on Victorians. The session itself lasts one and a half hours and is led by a museum facilitator. This is followed by lunch and the opportunity to explore the museum's Victorian collections.

The Home Sweet Home session gives children the opportunity to explore aspects of home life in Victorian Britain through visual, auditory and kinaesthetic means. A range of resources - objects, photographs, sounds and smells - are used to explore the themes of washing, food and leisure time in an average Victorian family.

The children at Hollybrook had been studying the Victorians and the school felt that the museum seemed a perfect way to consolidate the children's learning on the subject. At school the children had been researching what life was like for Victorian children at school and making comparisons between rich and poor families. The teacher felt that the session would give the children the opportunity to find out about other aspects of Victorian life.

The teacher felt that the best point in the topic to bring children on a visit to Milestones to participate in Home Sweet Home would be in the middle, as the children were given the opportunity to pose questions about things they wanted to find out about and still had time to follow up from the visit back at school.

The main positive elements the school felt about the session were that:

• it was very practical
• it was well planned and organised
• it gave the children a fantastic Victorian experience
• the plans provided were easy to follow

The whole experience gave the children a greater understanding of Victorian life and an opportunity to experience what this would have been like in a hands-on way.

"Both the children and I loved the day and would not have changed a thing. Thank you!!"

Using the 'Toys and Discovery session' at Milestones

Written in conjunction with a year one teacher from Fleet Infant School

The Milestones KS1 session Toys and Discovery is designed to support the QCA unit: How are our Toys different from those in the past? It is split up into two sessions each lasting an hour. One is the Toys session which is led by a museum facilitator and the other is the Discovery session which is led by the school.

The toys session involves the children exploring the museum's toy collection by handling, observing and asking questions. Through a range of carefully planned activities, children have the opportunity to:

• compare old and new toys
• sort toys according to their properties
• make their own decisions on the value of toys
• place toys along a timeline from 100 years ago to the present day
• identify toys using clues

The session encourages the use of a range of different learning styles allowing all children to access the session and gain valuable experience from it. The Discovery session provides the children with the opportunity to explore the museum through a range of focussed activities.

Milestones is a safe environment for children which brings history to life in a way that is meaningful to young children. They love the street scenes and the opportunity to have 'hands on' experience.

The topic on Toys is very much complemented by the trip to Milestones and all the activities of sorting toys, putting them on a time line and guessing their identity from clues reinforces the learning going on in school.

The main things that the children gain from the session are that it reinforces the learning objectives for the topic and through handling artefacts the history is made more 'real'. There is also a sense of fun and exploration in what the children do.

Although the main focus of the visit is the Toys session, the children thoroughly enjoy the Discovery session too. They benefit from time to explore the museum for themselves to take in wider elements of life in the past.