On Wednesday 3rd December, 45 children from Bidford Primary School visited the Shakespeare Centre with their teachers for a trial of our new Key Stage 2 course A Time and Place.
This workshop, designed specifically for the new primary curriculum, captures the imagination of children as they become history detectives for the day, examining primary evidence to understand and interpret the past. The children enjoyed connecting artefacts and events in history using our brand new interactive timeline, unearthing artefacts in dig boxes, examining residue boxes for clues about the past, taking part in our ‘Rot or Not’ challenge and discovering the amazing Roman and Saxon finds in our Collections.
They were especially excited to see the Saxon grave goods that were found in their own village, Bidford-on-Avon. In the afternoon, they visited the Famous Beyond Words exhibition and the Birthplace. They were fascinated by the story of the unearthing of the WS seal ring near Holy Trinity Church and enjoyed studying the Birthplace as an example of built archaeology, as well as discovering the Shakespeare story.
In the afternoon, the Shakespeare Centre was a hive of activity yet again as the children made their own Saxon brooches (based on the one they had seen in the strong room), wrote with quills, formed a seal using a WS replica ring and curated their own museum, displaying a collection of writing materials through time, inspired by William Shakespeare.
We were very impressed with the children, who were fully immersed in our hands-on activities and asked really insightful questions all morning. The feedback from the teachers was wonderful. They were impressed by how the course helped the children grasp the very difficult concept of chronology, the number of Roman and Saxon finds in our Collections, and how inspired the children were with our activities. This is really encouraging to hear and we hope that A Time and Place will prove to be a really popular educational offering.
Find out more about our educational courses for students and enthusiasts at all levels.