We love an educational summer holiday day out here at PTP! The last two weeks of July see’s the UK’s biggest annual celebration of archaeology taking place known as the “CBA Festival of Archaeology”. With hundreds of events delivered by community groups, heritage organisations, universities and commercial units, it helps over half a million people to engage in archaeology, explore stories of place and connect with the environment around them. For information about events that may be going on in your area visit their site here.
With such a focus on the core subjects, other subjects such as history sadly get somewhat neglected! At Primary Tutor Project we like to bring history into some of our lessons and we thought it would be useful to parents to share some online history resources that we find engaging! We’ve picked our 6 favourite history resources to inspire your young historians (and teach you parents a few new facts about the past, too!).
Resources
A treasure trove of archaeology and social history activities to help educate and entertain; inspired by the collections across Colchester and Ipswich Museums. Museum From Home offers step-by-step instructions to help your child make their own castle, construct a Roman shield, helmet or sword, recreate a work of art, explore life as an evacuee, work out the answers to some Anglo Saxon riddles and loads more- all from the comfort of your own home.
The National Archives’ Time Travel TV brings archives of history to your child’s armchair! Every exciting session introduces a treasure from the collection to families, with exciting follow-up activities for viewers to complete, including a detective-based enquiry exploring other documents and a themed craft to make.
Your child can test their knowledge with some online quizzes, write their name in Egyptian hieroglyphs, explore Ancient Greece and take a ride in a chariot and more – there are loads of historical games, aligned with the KS2 history curriculum, to try on the Children’s University of Manchester History website. This is a really fun and interactive site well worth your child’s screen time allowance!
You and your child will find activity and information PDFs, zoomable images and short films about all the KS1 and KS2 history curriculum topics on the Ashmolean Museum’s Learning Resources website. Watch a film about mummification, find out more about Ancient Greek pots, read Latin inscriptions, learn to read, write and say Chinese numbers, understand Stone Age technology, listen to Old English and see Guy Fawkes’ lantern – all without setting a foot outside your front door!
Liberty’s Kids: Est. 1776 is an animated historical fiction television series in which two teenage reporters cover the events of the Revolutionary War for Ben Franklin’s newspaper, The Philadelphia Gazette. Beautifully animated and fun with various celebrity voiceovers. And the best thing is its all free to watch on YouTube.
Keep young historians exploring the past without stepping outside your front door with Historic Royal Palaces’ games, videos and animations for home schooling.
They’ll need to step into the shoes of a Tudor servant and plan a feast for a hungry Henry VIII (but be careful not to be unmasked as an imposter!), reorder some historical events in a Story Shufffle game, explore a millennium of history at the Tower of London in a podcast series and investigate Tudor times with a modern-day reporter… all in the name of historical accuracy!
These are some of our favourite resources but there are so many more resources out there! If there is a museum in your local area, visit it and ask for resources and information. Staff are always willing to share their knowledge and info.
For more ideas and resources feel free to contact us here at Primary Tutor Project.
