Make Your Own History
Make Your Own History is a fantastic ‘living history’ workshop available to schools, providing a wide range of practical and hands-on workshops aimed at KS2 pupils, but can be adapted for other ages and abilities.
The activities not only help pupils understand and interpret historical information, but also provide a fantastic opportunity for developing teamwork and problem-solving skills. Learning by doing provides a powerful learning experience and greatly enhances historical understanding and knowledge.
We bring everything you need to create a quarter scale, 6m long Viking longship in your school hall that is large enough for children to “sail” when it is complete. Your children will become Viking shipwrights for the day.
During the day, children will:
- Build the Viking longship
- Weave “sails” on a Viking “warp-weighted loom”
- Sew sails for the ship
- Make “authentic” Viking shields and design oar blades and dragon heads.
We bring everything needed for the pupils to build to create a 3m diameter Bronze/Iron Age roundhouse as well as other related activities for the children to experience. This workshop covers over 12,000 years of history! It starts at around 10,000BC and finishes at 43AD when the Romans invaded Britain.
During the day, the children will:
- Learn to knapp flint to make stone age tools (Mesolithic 10,000BC)
- Build a 10m circumference model of Stonehenge (Neolithic 3,000BC)
- Use replica period drills to create jewellery (Bronze Age 2500BC)
- Use querns to grind corn as people did at the start of the age of agriculture (Iron Age 800 BC – 43AD)
- Build the roundhouse (Iron Age 800 BC – 43AD).
We bring everything you need to create a 3m x 3m Egyptian pyramid. The pyramid rises to 2.4m at the capstone and contains 240 blocks of ‘stone’ which is roughly equivalent to the number of real stone blocks the Ancient Egyptians fitted into place each day! The pyramid contains a secret entrance and passageway that leads to the burial chamber deep within the pyramid itself.
During the day, the children will:
- Build the pyramid itself
- Use a sledge to move ‘building blocks’ just as the Egyptians did
- Disembowel a model body and place the innards into canopic jars as well as wrapping two bodies in bandages
- Make ‘papyrus’ the Egyptian way
- Use chisels to carve hieroglyphics into rock, limestone and granite.
Become Roman Legionaries for the day and build two Roman ‘Onagar’ catapults and a Roman battering ram; the pupils all get a chance to fire the catapults at the end of day!
During the day, the children will:
- Build two 2m long ‘Onagar’ (kicking mule) catapults
- Build a working 3m long battering ram
- Build a section of Roman road
- Create ‘The Bridge over the River Rhine’
- Create battle standards
- Design and create standard medals.
We bring everything you need to create a Tudor house in your school hall that is large enough for 30 – 40 children to stand up in. Your children will become Tudor craftsmen for the day.
Your children will:
- Use carpenters’ marks to assemble the Tudor house
- Work in teams to build a poor man’s house
- Compare the lives of rich and poor
- Make wattle and daub panels
- Bodge (shape) the pegs used to pin houses together
- Tile and thatch a section of roof.
