Community News & Events

Young Historian Project
Update for November 2005
Janet Ward, the owner of Holmsdale Manor Club, contacted me about running some YHP events at the club. She had read about the Young Historian Project on a poster in the Co-op store in Ibstock.
Holmsdale Manor Club is a nursery and after-school club on High Street in Ibstock. At the after-school club they cater for children from the age of 4 to 11. There are 46 children in attendance at the club and between 12 and 25 children there on any one night. In the past Janet has had a positive approach to letting the children learn about their history and local landscape. This includes visits to Donnington le Heath manor house and walks around Ibstock village and Ibstock Grange.
As we were given a free hand in the events that we run, we decided to start with artefacts and archaeological finds. Displaying and then letting people handle finds, is common practice for local groups and museum services with the public. There are four main groups of historical artefacts that can be reasonably transported and displayed. These are glass, metal, pottery and flint. We started with glass (9/11/05), metal (15/11/05), pottery (25/11/05) and then flint (30/11/05). All the events needed small assemblages of material to work with and then a plan of how we use this material with the children. The structure of the plan was to keep it as simple as possible, with any technical information about the artefacts to be supplied by the historian. To encourage questions about the artefacts, we included a ‘guess the artefact’ activity to the events, except for the flint. All four events ended with the children drawing the artefacts.
The next event at Holmsdale will be on the 7th December 05, when we will be working with clay and the Runic alphabet. There will be a more comprehensive report of the work down at Holmsdale Manor Club.
The Young Historian Project's Holmsdale Gallery

This is my picture!
By Tara aged 6
Busy drawing artefacts
By Eleanor aged 5
By Connor aged 4
Some of the artefacts on display at the event
Learning and having fun	One penny
By Elizabeth aged 5
Creating masterpieces!
Deep in concentration
By Millie	By Tara
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