Museum in Your Classroom
Bringing the Museum to You
Museums Worcestershire can bring history and art into your school or setting through loans boxes and outreach sessions. Loans boxes cover themes including Roman life, Victorian life, toys from the past, the Second World War, and can be borrowed for a half or full term.
Through our outreach programme, museum professionals can deliver hands-on workshops and sessions onsite, allowing young learners to get up close to fascinating objects and artefacts from the collection. Find out more by clicking through the links below.
Worcestershire County Museum sessions
Below Stairs
Our costumed workshop leader will visit school in the role as one of the Castle’s housemaids. She will explain about the conditions of employment, contrasting a servant’s lifestyle with that of his or her employer. She will explain about wide variety of duties the servants carried out in a typical upper-middle class Victorian household using equipment of the period. Children will then have the opportunity to take part in a carousel of practical activities, including washing, ironing and cleaning, as well as handling original Victorian objects.
Sessions can be adapted to suit all age and ability groups. Content can be used to focus on an overarching study on the lives of children in the past.
Learning Outcomes
- Find out what life was like in the past
- Handle old objects from the Museum Loans collection
- Have a go at some of the servants’ daily tasks
- Have fun learning about the past
Curriculum links
History: know where people and events fit within a chronological framework and identify similarities and differences with different periods; understand changes within living memory and in national life; a study of British history beyond 1066. English: listen and respond appropriately to adults and peers; ask relevant questions to extend understanding and knowledge.
Suitable for Key Stage 1 and 2 – Max 30 children per workshop
Cost = £130 per half-day plus travel expenses (45p per mile from County Museum to school) / £230 per full day plus travel expenses (45p per mile from County Museum to school).
Toys from the Past
(previously Childhood Treasures)
A hands-on activity looking at the similarities and differences between toys today and toys in the past. To reinforce concepts of ‘old’ and ‘new’ and to provide a wide range of opportunities for children to develop their speaking and listening skills. A chance for children to discuss changes to toys and the way people played that has happened within living memory.
Learning Outcomes
Children will be able to:
- Draw conclusions about the types of old and new toys
- Add new words to their vocabulary and reinforce prior learning and experience
- Identify materials used to make toys in the past and toys today
- Handle old toys from the Museum Loans collection
- Gain an understanding of the different mechanisms and forces used to make toys work (i.e.: clockwork, push, pull etc)
Suitable for Key Stage 1 – 45 min workshop (max 15 children), two workshops per half-day
Cost = £130 per half-day plus travel expenses (45p per mile from County Museum to school) / £230 per full day plus travel expenses (45p per mile from County Museum to school).
Life on the Home Front
A WW2 costumed workshop leader will come to your school to show you what life was like on the Home Front during the Second World War.
During an introductory talk children will find out about rationing, evacuation, salvage collection, air-raids and shelters. This will be followed by series of hands-on activities, including tasks for children around the home such as laundry, packing a suitcase, wartime toys, morse code and bandaging. These activities give the children an opportunity to learn and develop new skills.
Learning Outcomes
Children will be able to:
- Compare their life to the lives of children in the past
- Consider what life was like for children living during Wartime
- Understand rationing, why and how it was implemented
Suitable for Key Stages 1 & 2 – Max 30 children per workshop
Cost = £130 per half-day plus travel expenses (45p per mile from County Museum to school) / £230 per full day plus travel expenses (45p per mile from County Museum to school).
Pepys, Pudding and Pox
Through this activity session children will gain an understanding of how we know about of the Great Fire of London (1666) and the Great Plague (1665) through the diary of Samuel Pepys.
A costumed workshop leader, in the role of the great diarist himself, uses extracts from Pepys’ diary to discuss both of these important 17th century events. The second part of the session is a carousel of hands on activities including using maps to identify key places in London, writing in code and sorting what burns and what does not. The session also includes a fire tornado demonstration and a science experiment to show how the fire started.
Suitable for Key Stages 1 & 2 – Max 30 children per workshop
Cost = £130 per half-day plus travel expenses (45p per mile from County Museum to school) / £230 per full day plus travel expenses (45p per mile from County Museum to school).
Why do we remember Florence Nightingale?
Children will gain an understanding of the life and work of Florence Nightingale, the journeys that she made and what was important about Florence that merits us remembering her.
A costumed workshop leader can visit your school and look back over Florence’s life and work using pictures and objects. This is followed by a carousel of hands-on activities including: bandaging, investigating Florence’s journeys on a map, matching old and new object pictures, drawing, cleaning and washing and investigating museum objects that Florence may have recognised.
Learning Outcomes
Children will be able to:
- Consider what life was like in the past
- Gain an understanding of the changes in medicine and hygiene over time
- Handle old objects from the Museum Loans collection
Suitable for Key Stage 1 – Max 30 children per workshop
Cost = £130 per half-day plus travel expenses (45p per mile from County Museum to school) / £230 per full day plus travel expenses (45p per mile from County Museum to school).