FUNTIMES HOME EDUCATION

This was our first topic and the children seemed to really enjoy doing it.  Luckily there was a session on Vikings being run at the local library, so the children went along to that with a couple of friends to add to their learning.

We found lots of literature on Vikings at the local library.  We especially enjoyed the Dorling Kindersley book on the subject as it was very child friendly.  We also found books with lots of Viking crafts to try out, this always goes down well with my two.

The internet was also fabulous for information, games and crafts (see links below).  The children produced lovely work on the runes, clothing, everyday living, being a child in that era, and a monk trying to save his treasures in the monastry.  Also, the children built small longships and used pegs to make dolls with scraps of materials to represent Viking clothing, together with shields, spears and helmets. 

   "Viking longships ready for battle"

Useful links:-

http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/vikings/

http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ancient/vikings/launch_gms_viking_quest.shtml (save the monastry game)

http://home.freeuk.net/elloughton13/vcontent.htm (a favourite site of ours)

http://www.crayola.com/ideas/idea_display.cfm?id=937 (viking longship)

(work: Summer '05)

To extend this topic further, we were lucky enough to have a weekend in York and made sure we paid a visit to the Jorvik Centre ("The Authentic Viking Encouter").  Archaeologists uncovered wonderfully preserved remains of Viking-age Coppergate in the city of "Jorvik" (York) in the late 1970s.  Visitors are able to experience a ride a special carriage through a reconstruction of actual Viking age streets, hear the sounds and smell the aroma and listen to the a running commentary (children's version is available).  There is a small museum after this ride which is full of interesting facts.  With people dressed in Viking clothing able to help with questions, sell you their wares and address important details the visit seemed a nice conclusion to our previous work.

(work: March '06)

We decided to have a look at the Native American Indians as the children were constantly watching the film "Spirit of the Cimaron" by Dreamworks and it made sense to discover the history of the Lakota Indians and the building of the Transcontinental Railway which built up the storyline. 

The children knew the film very well, they had watched it constantly over a period of time and we listened to the music while we worked!  It is indeed a very watchable film, told through the eyes of Spirit, a mustang stallion, and his journey away from his herd to discover a new, not so approachable world.  Dreamworks have a website dedicated to this film with a trailer that features some inspiring opening phrases. The site has information about the film, games, activities and merchandise.

Many books from the library helped us with this topic.  In particular we found the "Make it Work!  North American Indians" (ISBN 1 85434 277 0) to be very good as it had lots of hands-on activities.  We briefly studied the settlement and unsettlement of the natives in America, who arrived around the era of the Ice Age.  When Christopher Columbus discovered what he thought was India in 1492 (although it was America), he called the natives Indians.  The new white settlers wanted land too in America and were willing to fight the natives for it.  In 1876, Colonel Cluster fought the Indians at Little Big Horn and a lot of Indians suffered.  In 1890, the Americans had crushed the Lakota Indians at Wounded Knee; you can read more information on this history at this website.

The Indians would capture horses and use them for their everyday work, like hunting or herding buffalo, or to assist them when moving their tribe to a new settlement.  They would paint their horses with symbols to represent different things, or perhaps the number of enemy killed in battle.  The names given to their horses would also have a meaning.  The Indians would construct tepees using strong tall poles and buffalo hide, again with painted symbols. Although the tepees would take about an hour to erect, the Lakotas were a mobile tribe and would need to be able to dismantle their homes to move on to their next settlement.

K named her horse Dakota (the friendly ones).  The symbols represent
coup marks (lines), hail (dots), enemy killed in hand battle (hand),
warrior wore breastplate (circle)

To help with our learning, we made a small scale settlement of two tepees, using sturdy twigs held together securely with natural string, and painted calico material to simulate the buffalo hide.  Pipecleaner Indians dressed in traditional costume, with dark plaited and decorated hair, some carrying weapons, were added to the scene.  K and B painted two horses, one of which pulled along a travois (a carrier for young children).  Made of wood and attached to the horse, the carrier would have been dragged along the ground behind the animal so that children, when tired of walking, could climb aboard for, what I would imagine to be, a rather bumpy ride!

We learnt that the Indians used natural things to dye their fabrics, like grass and earth.  We used small pieces of calico in boiling water with grass, earth or tumaric spice to produce coloured fabrics.  On these, we drew stories, as Indian's were great story tellers and would record their greatest adventures using pictures and symbols.

We found out about the Transcontinental Railroad which featured in the film and followed it's building progress on this website.  We also followed the route on the atlas, and roughly plotted the route and significant events on an outline map. K used wool to follow the outline of the railroad to work out if the scale of 3cm - 200 miles, used on the website mentioned above, had accurately been recorded.  Central Pacific laid 690 miles of track and Union Pacific 1,087 totalling 1,777 miles.  With some help, K worked out the total miles to be 1,600 miles, so it was very close indeed!

We found this topic to be extremely interesting to follow, and may well explore it further in the future.  This website will provide you with more indepth information.

(work: Sept. '05)

11th November, Remembrance Day, sparked off this topic and so we actually began by understanding why we remember those who died or were lost during this war and those that followed.  We read the famous "In Flanders Fields" poem beautifully written by Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae, MD of the Canadian Army and made 3D poppies for this occasion.

We found lots of child friendly books in the library to help us research this topic.  We began by noting the key people from this period of time, Kaiser Wilhelm II, King  George V, David Lloyd George and Vladimir Ilyich Lenin (Ulyanov) and understanding their different roles during the war. 

We read Michael Foreman's book named "War Game" (available here) which helped us all understand not only the hardship of wartime, but how unnecessary fighting is, how the two parties had no idea why they were fighting and were relieved to have a reprieve from war to play a good old footie match together to celebrate their Christmas in the awful conditions that they were becoming accustomed too.  K and I also read "War Horse" by Michael Morpurgo, another excellent book which provided extra knowledge of war time life during 1914-1918, seen through the eyes of a horse. We decided to become a war time fighter and find out about the clothes, tools, food and weapons we would have used during this war.

B's person, pictured below, has been named Jonny and is 19 year's old, the minimum age allowed for enlisting.  He carries his gas mask with him (as gas was used during this war and could cause severe problems) his rifle and entrenching tool (much needed to assist in the digging of the trenches).  He would carry food rations consisting of tea, hard biscuits and sugar, and a pouch with necessary everyday items like a razor, shaving brush, boot laces, knife, spoon and fork.

We found a map showing the British, French and German Front Lines and discovered it was 400 miles long and was dug, using the entrenching tool, in 1914.  This was a slow process at first as the new soldiers were inexperienced but they learnt quickly and became much quicker at this endless job as time went on.  Some parts of the trench was dug as a zig-zag shape to aid safety when firing, and the overall trench area would stretch in all directions to house communication systems and important offices.  As trenches became very muddy very quickly, wood was used to line the floor and sandbags would line the sides.  Dugouts were cut into the side of trenches to help protect soldiers from bad weather, but often, as the trenches filled with rain water or snow and eventually mud, health problems occurred like trench foot.

We designed our own trench using lots of mud on a lined tray, carving out lines of trenches as we felt they may have appeared.  By twisiting lengths of wire around our finger we were able to make lines of barbed wire at the edge of "no-mans land" and we placed wooden lolly sticks on the floor as duck boards.  Using B's little army people with guns and a cannon, and hanging a small replica First World War aeroplane above it completed the scene.  Aeroplanes were used to warn of large numbers of enemy troups approaching the front line.

Reading some of the detailed poetry written during this era was touching and helped the children understand the effects of war.  The children chose "Gold Braid", by A.A. Milne (1882-1956) as a peom to copy out and they found out what some of the unusual phrases used in the poem actually meant.

One of the fun parts of this topic was reading about the Christmas of 1914.  An unofficial truce on Christmas Day when a football match took place with the Germans. We read about it in Michael Foreman's book mentioned above and it is on this website here.  Christmas boxes were handed out to those in the trenches by Princess Mary, daughter of the King and Queen.  Although the embossed brass boxes were small, they contained a card from the Princess, cigarettes, tabbaco, pipe and lighter, or for those that were younger or non-smokers, a packet of sweets and a bullet pen.  Although a large amount of boxes were distributed in time for this Christmas, many men did not receive their boxes until 1916, and even by 1919 many were thought to have not yet been distributed.

The children wrote a letter and thought of a couple of special things they could have sent to their father as a gift during this time.  They both found it very hard to imagine a family member being away from home for so long, but they decided they would send photographs of themselves, a little present (probably home made), a letter with recent news and B thought a toothbrush and paste would be good too.

B enjoyed finding out about the different military weapons used during this war, the liners, tanks, Zeppelin and British aircraft.  We learnt about spies and the different ways they passed on secret messages, and we used buttons to write a coded message and then worked out each others codes. 

Finally we looked at the medals awarded to those who fought so hard during this war - The British War Medal and the Victory Medal (known as "Mutt and Jeff").  My Grandfather had been awarded these and luckily my Mother still has them so we were able to look and hold real medals rather than seeing them in a book or on the screen.  We made our own medals using clay and the children summed up their feelings of this war as "pointless" and "not very nice".  They used descriptive words to put across how they may have felt as a solidier at war; "flustered, fuming, irritated and frantic" from K and "tearful, struggle, worried, angry and panic" from B.

Useful websites:-

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/FWW.htm (an excellent and detailed site)http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/worldwarone/ (listening and reading four true stories from this war)
http://www.schoolshistory.org.uk/Trenchsystem.jpg (detailed picture of the layout of trenches)
http://www.firstworldwar.com/warontheweb/index.htm (informative site)
http://killeenroos.com/5/list.html (pictures of uniforms)

(work: Nov/Dec '05)

The children enjoyed learning about life during World War I, so it seemed appropriate to continue with World War II.  We started by finding out the key people involved in this war, King George VI, Neville Chamberlain, Right Honourable Winston Churchill and Adolf Hitler.  Obviously there were many other people that had important and memorable roles during this time, but these few, I felt, were necessary names for the children to remember at this time in their learning.  We read a couple of RH Winston Churchill's famous speeches and the children chose a line or sentence that they felt would stick in their minds.  They both thought the speeches were powerful and would reach out to the public.

As the war continued for a longer period that the first war, the children each kept a time line of key events from 1938 (when Adolf Hilter marched into Austria) to 1954 (when rationing finally came to an end).  The timeline not only had written information but drawings and coloured flags of some of the countries involved.  This helped to break up the appearance of continuous written work.  To go along side this, we printed off a simple map of Europe from Enchanted Learning and used little tags to plot the different countries that Germany fought, and in some cases, took over. This was added to as we continued with the timeline, so it built up over time to give the children an idea of how the war spread through the countries over the 6 years.   When we learnt about the war in Britian, we printed off a map of the United Kingdom and plotted key cities that suffered severe bombing during the raids.  During our learning, we used books for reference as well as the many interesting and interactive sites on the internet.  We also watched a TV documentary on the defense system around Britian during this time, including hidden barbed wire and pill boxes which are often seen to this day.  We also watched some episodes of a TV programme showing modern day children living as evacuees on a farm in the country.  It was interesting to see exactly how the children had to adjust to a different way of life.

Learing about life in Britain during World War II was obviously quite fascinating and quite different to life during the previous war.  Understanding the heartache of being evacuated along with so many other children to an often unknown foster family in the countryside must have been extremely scary for most children.  C.S. Lewis' film "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe" had just been released in the cinemas and therefore watching the beginning of the film, with the war planes filling the skies over London and the young characters being sent away made our learning more real life.  After reading several detailed reference books on this subject, I set a few questions to the children to see how they would have felt about being evacuated.  To answer the question of whether they'd feel excited or sad about leaving their parents and home, K felt she would feel both these emotions as she would be sad at leaving her family but excited as it would be a new adventure.  B said he'd been happy to see the country (having lived in "London"), but would "mostly be sad".  Both felt, when asked if they'd like to be evacuated to the countryside, that leaving the city would be very good fun and they could be free in the countryside to have picnics and climb trees (B) and that there wouldn't be anything they wouldn't like about living away from a large built up area (K). We were lucky enough to come across some details of the number of children, from key cities around the country, whom had been evacuated between 1st - 3rd September, 1939.  We used this information to complete an Excel spreadsheet which was an interesting excerise.

Selection of work from the topic

We read about the small amount of clothing items allowed in the childrens' suitcases when travelling away from home and how different this would be if we travelled now.  To take just 2 pairs of underpants and 6 hankies caused quite a stir!  Both children felt they should take some toys with them and food seemed to appear on their lists too (like cake - B).  As well as their small suitcases, children during the war also had to pack their gas masks, identity card, clothing and personal coupons and ration books. 

Through reading and the internet we achieved a good understanding on the subject of rationing.  It was hard to comprehend how a family could survive on the small adult portions (from January 1940) available each week.  We each thought up a simple meal using some rationed food and some home grown vegetables and fruits and found, in fact, that a decent meal could quite easily be produced, although portions would probably be smaller than we are used to now!  By baking an Eggless Sponge Cake (taken from a World War II recipe book), the children were able to see that, although tasting a little different, the end product was still quite bearable.  We decided to grow some vegetables ourselves and enjoyed the taste of home grown beans, potatoes, tomatoes and a pumpkin later in the year.  As this was such a success, we have now taken on an allotment plot to keep this healthy activity going.  The children designed their own posters to spread the word about healthy eating and they made tiny ones to put on the side of their doll's house and to decorate a mini garden they'd each produced using tiny vegetables from the doll's house or making some using plastacine!  We leanrt about the value of money in 1939 compared to today and, with some help, converted old money to today's new pence.  On the subject of rationing, we also looked at clothing coupons learning that each person was awarded only 60 coupons to buy new clothing items.  People had to make do with the clothing they had, patching up any wear and tear, passing them on to others in the household and generally taking great care of items.  K and B found online dressing up dolls which they cut out and coloured in pointing out the differences in clothes now and during the war.

The subject of night time blackouts was discussed.  We read how strict the street wardens were should they find a chink of light peeping through a window (to the point of issuing fines).  K and B were interested to hear that casulties rose during blackouts because cars, to start with, weren't allowed to have their headlights on.  As time went on, cars had "eye lid" style covers to shield the lights from those above and therefore less injuries occurred!  K and B drew blackout pictures using chalks and charcoal which produced an shady effect.  Shelters during air raids was an important part of life during this time.  We found out about the various shelters available, including the make-shift understairs or table shelters.  We found some dimensions for digging a plot large enough to house an Anderson shelter and we were lucky enough to find a neighbour whose garden still houses one!  Using our value of money chart from previous work, we were able to work out the cost of the Anderson shelter today, compared to 1939.

Collage street party scene to celebrate the end of the war

B enjoyed reading about the V1 and V2 rockets that were used towards the end of the war and also found out about other weapons, drawing and labelling pictures of different guns.

We took a trip to East Kirby to look around the small World War II museum and see a Lancaster Bomber perform a couple of taxi runs.  It was a wonderful day out for us all and it helped the children to further their understanding of the topic.

Lancaster taxi run - very noisy!

We have recently visited the Britain at War museum in London which, although small, was packed with information to read about WWII including letters, medals, gas masks and ration books to name a few.  We sat inside an Anderson Shelter to hear a lone overhead bomber fly past and drop it's load.  This really brought home the fear the people of the war had to experience night after night.  Looking at displays and hearing children's voices talking of evacuation together with walking through a bombed London street hearing the flames of the burning buildings and the shouts of the rescue crews trying to save those trapped in derelict buildings made for a thought provoking trip.

Internet sites of interest:

Home Sweet Home Front

BBC - Children of World War II

Woodlands Junior School

Snaith School

National Archives - Home Front

BBC Scotland - good interactive site

Historical Facts of World War II

Timeline

(work: Spring term '06)