A Victorian Christmas

This term, our Year 6 spent a day learning about The Victorians at a workshop day in school. The children thoroughly enjoyed not just reading about The Victorians but experiencing what life would have been like for school children during Victoria’s reign.

They spent part of the morning in a recreation of a typical classroom of the era, complete with a very stern schoolmistress whose lessons were dominated by harsh discipline, rote learning and poor-quality resources like scratchy ink pens, slates and blackboards.

They then carried out craft activities to celebrate Christmas as The Victorians had done, making cornucopias and baubles for the Christmas tree. In the afternoon, the children were participants in a Victorian music hall variety performance with acts such as melodrama, magicians, comedians, flea circus and tightrope walkers. It was enormous fun!

“I liked the performances at the end because they were well thought out and funny. I was a magician and our performance was called ‘Black magic.’ We read people’s minds." Lola Foskett.

“The teacher was wearing a long black dress and she was really strict - she even made Mr Clarke ‘cane’ Tillie and William for talking! I wouldn’t have liked to have lived in those times.” Charlotte Mackley.