Thursday 28 September 2017

Wow! - History detectives visit the local castle and church

Class LH, JC and AB used Framlingham Church and Castle for the 'wow' moment for their topic of "Towers, Tunnels and Turrets."  The year 1 and year 2 children have been learning about castles and their features, about mark making and graffiti and about historical artefacts relating to castles and churches.  

Mrs Colchester gave a short introduction in the church and the children then set off as history detectives to find examples of graffiti around the church.  



They found some on the pillars, the floors and even on the pews!  They used crayons to rub the imprint of the graffiti.


We also looked at shields in and around the church and found some with lions, crosses, and stars on.  We even spotted the school shield of Sir Robert Hitcham!



After that we went to the castle and had a treasure hunt to do to find arrow slits, towers, doors, windows and other key architectural parts of the castle.  This was great fun and many of us took a while to find the "flying door!"


Here we are identifying arrow slits, ramparts and the towers as key features of the castle.


We sketched examples of the key features which could be seen on the existing castle. 



We marched around the ramparts like soldiers and thought about what life was like as a soldier defending the castle and also how difficult it would be to attack the castle.  We pretended to shoot our bows and arrows through the arrow slits at the enemies attacking us. 

All the children had a very action packed and fulfilled morning at both the castle and the church. Thank you to the volunteers who without their help it would not be possible to enrich the children's learning.  It was a great morning, the children were a credit to the school and we all came back buzzing about the castle and the church.