SEARCH for History sessions

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  Time and Toys - History
  Early years
  This session is an introduction to history with a focus on toys. The children work in small groups and can explore our collections including a room set from a home long ago. They can dress up as a person from the past, from Roman times through to the 1950s; play with toys and games both real and replica including giant dominoes and snakes and ladders; and make a toy to take away.

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  Victorian Britain: Upstairs, Downstairs
  Key stage 1
  This session takes place in room sets from an 1880s town house furnished with real artefacts. Children explore the kitchen and parlour, thinking about the lives of the owners of the inhabitants, and comparing the Victorian home with modern homes. There is also a handling room with a wealth of objects, lenses and a video microscope. The session includes drawing, a story, dressing up and role play! A visit would support a topic on homes long ago or provide background to a topic on famous Victorians.

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  Victorian Britain: Upstairs, Downstairs
  Key stage 2
  Children are encouraged to look at how servants and owners co-existed within a Victorian house.
  The lives of the owners are looked at through their costume and the contents of a typical parlour. Children undertake a problem-solving exercise, analysing the tools of the servants as evidence of their lives. Artefact observation and recording work is developed through use of lenses and video-microscope with an emphasis on types and uses of materials.

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  Victorian Christmas
  Key stage 1 and 2
  Adaptation of the Upstairs, Downstairs session, exploring life in the 1880s, and emphasising how Victorians prepared for and celebrated Christmas.
  NB only available November and December.

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  Homemaking in the 1930s or 1950s or Wartime House
  Key stage 2
  This session uses our "Britain since 1930s" learning area with its cutaway reconstruction of a period house. Children consider the range of evidence available for building up a picture of what the home would have looked like. They set-dress the house with artefacts, considering continuity and change along the way.

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  The Wartime House
  Key stage 1
  The enormous popularity of our evidence based KS2 session has inspired us to create a more experiential workshop for KS1. Based on the 'When Granny was a Girl' format of groups moving round, the children experience the kitchen, the washing area, the corner shop in the era of rationing and coupons, a ration-book tea table, dressing up as wartime characters and going into our reconstructed Anderson shelter!

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  When Granny was a Girl
  Key stage 1 "When Granny was a Girl" is a soft carpeted space where our youngest school visitors can explore everyday activities from the recent past. Sessions include some time-line work and a chance to handle artefacts at six different "workstations". Pictures, photographs and story telling are also used as part of this session to complement the material available for handling.

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  Archaeology in Action - The Romans
  Key stage 2
  Archaeology in Action is a handling area with specially designed workstations kitted out with lenses, microscopes and other tools of the modern archaeologist. The session includes a slide talk considering evidence found at an archaeological site and close investigation of real and replica material from the Roman and Anglo-Saxon period. Emphasis is on looking for clues, sorting and documentation of material and building up hypotheses.