Blakesley Hall

We very much enjoyed our topic exploring the world of the Ancient Egyptians and learnt a lot. However, we are now moving on to our topic looking at the Tudors and are very excited about it. To kick start our topic we took a trip to Blakesley Hall, an actual Tudor House!

To start our day off, we learned how these houses were made. The children were interested to know the beams were made of actual wood but even more interested to find out the rest of the walls were made from Wattle and Daub - including manure!

We moved to the inside of the house where we met the Master and Lady of the house. Two of our children had a lot of fun commanding Mr Hegarty and Miss Bennett to help them get 'dressed' while acting as servants.

The rest of the children then dressed up as the servants of the house would have done, a part of the day which many of the children found enjoyable.

We then moved through the house where we learned what life would have been like for those within the house, from the Master of the house to his servants. We looked in the kitchen and were disgusted by the fact that rats would roam freely round but impressed with the 'hanging fridges' and other methods used to keep the meat fresh from the rats.

We swiftly moved on to avoid the rats. We took a quick look at the posh dining area where the Master of the house would entertain his guests. Women wouldn't even be allowed in here during the Tudor times. How unfair! We were all astounded at the obvious riches of the time on show.

We then had to climb up two flights of rickety stairs, one to get to the master bedroom where we saw Master Richard asleep on the straw four-poster bed where he would have to sleep semi-upright and use a bed pan! It really made us appreciate our own beds! We also learnt that the babies could be swaddled and hung on the wall to avoid being bitten by the rats!

In contrast, we carried on up to the servants bedrooms at the very top of the house where it was really cold. Here there were holes in the roof and many servants all cramped into one room. It was also really dark as they didn't have electricity.

 As the tour came to an end, we moved into a classroom where we attempted to complete different activities. We had to build a Tudor house, write with quills, match the names of parts of a house to their definition, brass rubbings and see if we could work out what different artefacts were used for. And we got to play with some Tudor toys which were very weird, none of them moved on their own and didn't even have remote controls!

 Overall, we had a magnificent day and it was an amazing way to start our topic as we learned so much which we can now build on.

Prince William Award

Recently, we were given the opportunity to experience the wonderful work the Prince William Award group do. It's a scheme that encourages children to develop their confidence, self awareness, sociability and so much more. During our taster session the children took part in 4 activities.

The first activity was a warm up where the children had to listen carefully to instructions and respond with an appropriate action. We then moved onto one of the main activities.

The first main activity was Giants, Wizards, Elves - a variation of Rock, Paper, Scissors that encouraged team work and mental strategies.

The next challenge was one that improved trust and team work. The children were partnered with one being blindfolded and the other had to give instructions so they could navigate round the room (there's no pictures as I took part and was blindfolded).

The final activity also encouraged team work. The children worked in groups of 6 and had to navigate the room, picking up objects and working them along the line and into a bucket while one hand was on the person in front's shoulder.

Overall this was an excellent day that the children massively enjoyed, taking a lot from it. We hope to be able to continue with the scheme next academic year.