Follow up activities for Home Sweet Home

Victorian toys

During the session, the children had the opportunity to handle toys that Victorian children might have played with in their spare time. The children could follow this up by researching other Victorian toys. What toys did children used to play with in the Victorian times? What were these toys made out of? Which toys do we have today that wouldn’t have been around in the Victorian times which they would miss? etc

Spare time in Victorian times

What other activities did Victorian people do during their spare time?

Rag rugging

Following on from the activity children completed at the museum, children could work on producing a class rag rug using embroidery material as the background material, cut up strips of ‘rag’ material and half a wooden clothes peg or a blunt pencil.

The aim of these activities is to be able to compare children’s own activities for spare time with those of a child in the Victorian times to gain a better understanding of the differences.

Victorian washing

Children could write a diary account of a day in the life of a Victorian child helping their mother with the washing.

or

Children could write a set of instructions on how to do washing in the Victorian times using all of the correct vocabulary.

To reinforce the vocabulary used in Victorian washing and the processes involved, children could do mimes/role play of the different parts of the process before doing one of these writing tasks, to help jog the memory.

Gadgets

The Victorians liked gadgets – tools to help them do all kinds of things like take the core out of an apple or open tins of food. The children could try and invent a new useful gadget that could be used today in the home which we don’t currently have. They could draw it, name it and produce an advertising poster for it to persuade people to buy it.