13). Schools

If your event is in term time , write to the History co-ordinator AND the Head-teacher AND the Chair of Governors of every Primary, (Middle Schools if there are any), Secondary and Private School and tell them about the educational advantages of seeing the Living History camp based on the history content of the National Curriculum. If you have time, get their names since a personally addressed envelope is more likely to get passed on by the school secretary. Like the rest of us they get tons of “junk” mail every year so anything you can do to personalise the address will aid your success. A phone call during the lunch hour for teachers or before or after school hours to the head teacher may pay dividends. In fact an early call, as long as you can keep it short, may be best because the phone is likely to be answered by the Head Teacher themselves (or the caretaker!) thus bypassing the school secretary.

Also consult the History Advisor in the Education Authority ( Education Authorities are either: County Councils (e.g. Lancashire, North Yorkshire, Berkshire), Metropolitan Councils (e.g. Manchester , Islington) or Unitary Authorities (e.g. Blackburn, Rutland , Herefordshire and the Isle of Wight )) and get them on your side. Guide to Councils here.

Finding a date that is suitable is quite tricky given that most events are in school holidays!!

If you are to link your activities to schools the only windows available are:

After the school SAT tests (four weeks before the end of the term 6 - so the last two weekends in June and the first two in July might be available for your event – this is when Kentwell Hall invite schools to attend during weekdays) check with the local schools as to the date of the tests. Or try early in term 1, allowing for a week for the pupils to settle in means the last three weekends in September although arrangements will have to have been made with the school authorities well before the summer holidays.

Schools Literture.

When designing your literature for schools use pictures of children enjoying themselves at a "leaning experience".

Living History Event for schools

To improve the take up rate of the free tickets you might consider actually raising the profile of your event within schools. This could be done by offering a “free” or reduced rate living history lesson. Moving the living historian between schools would be very time consuming and you might only visit two schools a day. Moving the schools might be more efficient. Using the site as your venue you could hire a coach to bus in up to 6 schools a day for a 45 minute session with each class of 30. By capturing the imagination of the children you would ensure a greater take up of the “free” tickets. This gives you 6x30=180 children in a day per coach/living historian or 180x5=900 children in a week. The breakeven point at a rough guess would be 100 children/parents paying a full entry price. If you can double the demonstrator/ child ratio this would halve.

School Day

If you can get re-enactors down for the Friday (or Monday) you could advertise a school day. Although Friday would be better if you want the children to bring their parents over the weekend. It would be cheaper for the school if you provided the transport and the bus could shuttle back and forth to local schools. You could organise the visits either on a Kentwell basis with parties of 30 visiting a range of stations for 10-15 minutes each or as Melfords used to do at Sulgrave with 45 minutes for groups of 10-12 with some making activity.

Free offers

Offer free tickets for each child if they bring an adult. The problem then remains of getting the children to remember to show it to their parents. You need to capture their imagination. Here is an idea that uses the age old yearning to collect things. I remember when we took our grandchildren to Sherwood Forest where they had “outlaws” at every turn, robbing me of my money. The “outlaws” were slot machines (parking ticket machines) that offered one from a set of 6 pictures of Robin, Maid Marion or a selection of Merry Men. A 20p coin purchased one item, not an unreasonable request, happily agreed to by a doting parent. However, to collect the whole set one would have to spend an average of £1.80!! Now that's an idea, your free ticket could have a picture of an historical character on it and the rest of the set could be collected at the event. A sort of medieval Pokemon card, not out of place in an historic setting – consider all those “long galleries” lined with portraits of the “great and the good” from a particular era. How you distribute them I leave up to you. It could be part of a game where a different card could be collected at a range of “stations”. Any child visiting: a craftsman, watching the hawking, witnessing the battle, buying at the market, going to the jakes or seeing the knight being armoured, could get picture of an artisan, a hawk. A man-at-arms, a peddler, a gong farmer, a Lord etc. There is a whole series of illustrations in the “Book of Trades” from the Pope at the top right through the social hierarchy to a beggar at the end that could be hand coloured and turned out as a set of cards. The first card (Robin Hood, the King?) could be handed out with the invitation to bring their parents along.

Art & design project

Why not involve the local schools in an art project? They could devise a “coat of arms” for their favourite knight or a coin for Grunel the Moneyer to make a die for. The presentation to the winner would add a bit of local interest in the local press. The ideas are endless. Design a tile for Kate Tiler to make a mould. Kate will come along and do art activities with the children. Tie the activity into the National Curriculum. Art, Design, History, Creative Writing can all be incorporated into a project to make it attractive to creative teachers.

School term times

These can vary between Education Authorities. A search on the web for the appropriate authority under “school term times” or “school term dates” should find the appropriate information.

For example the Gloucestershire CC dates are:

Bank holidays for 2007  - CLICK FOR UP TO DATE DETAILS

National Curriculum

History at key stages 1 and 2

These are the units that the History National Curriculum recommends teachers to choose from when preparing their lesson plans.

Unit 1. How are our toys different from those in the past?
Unit 2. What were homes like a long time ago?
Unit 3. What were seaside holidays like in the past?
Unit 4. Why do we remember Florence Nightingale?
Unit 5. How do we know about the Great Fire of London?
Unit 6A. Why have people invaded and settled in Britain in the past? A Roman case study
Unit 6B. Why have people invaded and settled in Britain in the past? An Anglo-Saxon case study
Unit 6C. Why have people invaded and settled in Britain in the past? A Viking case study
Unit 7. Why did Henry VIII marry six times?
Unit 8. What were the differences between the lives of rich and poor people in Tudor times?
Unit 9. What was it like for children in the Second World War?
Unit 10. What can we find out about ancient Egypt from what has survived?
Unit 11. What was it like for children living in Victorian Britain?
Unit 12. How did life change in our locality in Victorian times?
Unit 13. How has life in Britain changed since 1948?
Unit 14. Who were the ancient Greeks?
Unit 15. How do we use ancient Greek ideas today?
Unit 16. How can we find out about the Indus Valley civilisation?
Unit 17. What are we remembering on Remembrance Day?
Unit 18. What was it like to live here in the past?
Unit 19. What were the effects of Tudor exploration?
Unit 20. What can we learn about recent history from studying the life of a famous person?

History at key stage 3

Unit 1. Introductory unit what's it all about?
Unit 2. How did medieval monarchs keep control?
Unit 3. How hard was life for medieval people in town and country?
Unit 4. How did the medieval church affect people's lives?
Unit 5. Elizabeth I how successfully did she tackle the problems of her reign?
Unit 6. What were the achievements of the Islamic states 600-1600?
Unit 7. Images of an age what can we learn from portraits 1500-1750?
Unit 8. The civil wars was England 'turned upside down' in the seventeenth century?
Unit 9. From Glorious Revolution to the '45 how united was the kingdom?
Unit 10. France 1789-94 why was there a revolution?
Unit 11. Industrial changes action and reaction
Unit 12. Snapshot 1900 what was British middle-class life like?
Unit 13. Mughal India and the coming of the British, 1526-1857 how did the Mughal Empire rise and fall?
Unit 14. The British Empire how was it that, by 1900, Britain controlled nearly a quarter of the world?
Unit 15. Black peoples of America from slavery to equality?
Unit 16. The franchise why did it take so much longer for British women to get the vote?
Unit 17. Divided Ireland why has it been so hard to achieve peace in Ireland?
Unit 18. Hot war, cold war why did the major twentieth-century conflicts affect so many people?
Unit 19. How and why did the Holocaust happen?
Unit 20. Twentieth-century medicine how has it changed the lives of people?
Unit 21. From Aristotle to the atom scientific discoveries that changed the world?
Unit 22. The role of the individual for good or ill?