Year 3 Trip to Dover Museum
On Monday 11th February 2008, Year 3 trooped aboard a coach laden with packed lunches, bound for Dover and its famous cliffs. After a journey which passed the Viking ship at Pegwell Bay, we stepped out of the coach and immediately strained our necks, as we looked up into the blue skies, at Dover Castle, where Henry VIII famously had the first glimpse of his bride(s) to be. Having drunk our fill of this magnificent sight, we turned towards our destination, Dover Museum, for a day filled with fun, frolics and facts about the Anglo-Saxons. Having vested ourselves of coats, we followed a lady, dressed in traditional Anglo-Saxon costume to a room that had been set out to show part of what would have been the main hall in a village. We learnt what life would have been like for children and the different roles boys and girls would have played. Girls would have learnt skills such as weaving, how to use a Spindlewhorl and cooking, whereas, boys would have learnt how to farm and as they got older, they would also learn how to hunt wild boar, which was extremely dangerous.
Following this, the children had the opportunity to handle a range of reproduction artefacts, such as shoes, spoons and drinking horns. The girls looked somewhat shocked to find out that, as most of them were eight years old and had their hair tied up, they were advertising themselves as ready to become engaged and quite probably to a man of at least thirty years of age! Efe Girden had the opportunity to dress up as Anglo Saxon warrior, although he still looked more friendly than fearsome!
After a brief snack we headed up to the theatre for a fabulous drama workshop with Ian of KIC Theatre, where the children became not only warriors and farmers, but even turned themselves into the flaming cakes that King Alfred supposedly burnt. Having split into groups and acted out the story of Beowulf under Ian’s expert tutelage, we settled down for a well earned lunch.
Post lunch, we exercised our legs and climbed to the top floor of the museum for a fascinating journey, many thousands of years into the past. There, perfectly preserved lay the remains of a Bronze Age boat discovered in Dover in 1992, and found to be over 3,000 years old. We all had great fun learning new things in the interactive area around the boat. We discovered dendrochronology, (the dating of wood), learnt how to secure planks of wood together using only rope and in a video, it was revealed how archaeologists carefully dug up and preserved the boat.
Finally, we split into smaller groups and investigated the rest of the museum, which included a special room showing how people used to live over the past 2000 years. There were full-size reconstructions of period rooms, which included a Roman kitchen, a Saxon hall, a Medieval room, a Stuart hall, a Victorian parlour, a Second World War living room and a 1950’s bedroom. Our perusing was, much to the children’s joy, slotted in around an opportunity to visit the shop, where much happiness was found in the purchasing of rubbers and pencils! Happy and full of all the things we had seen and learnt, we headed back to the coach for school and afternoon games.
Written by Mrs Topping
