Key Stage 1 Changes within Living Memory

A Day in the Life

Children think about what questions to ask grandparents and great-grandparents in order to elicit good historical information.

Teaching Outcomes
To make a timeline of domestic life from great-grandparents’ era to current time.
To compose questions for older people about domestic life and day-to-day roles when they were children.

Children will:

• Sort photos of domestic activities and items into old and new and create a timeline.
• Compose questions to ask parents, grandparents and great-grandparents about day-to-day life when they were a child.

• Images of domestic activities to order
• ‘Hunt the question’ game cards
• Question cards and activity cards

• Coloured card to write questions on

Penguins on ice game from bbc.co.uk

Children interview parents, grandparents and great-grandparents about changes in tasks and roles in and around the house. Children then write diary entries.

Teaching Outcomes
To identify fashions and style trends from various eras.
To paint a portrait of a relative as a child or young adult.

Children will:

• Organise a range of diary entries by era, according to the day-to-day roles and activities described in them.
• Interview a great-grandparent, grandparent and parent in class about domestic activities when they were children, and the roles different members of their families had.
• Write a diary entry about domestic roles from an historic era.

• Day-to-day roles chart
• Diary entries for sorting

You do not need any particular resources for this session.

There are no weblinks needed for this session.

Children study clothes and hairstyles over the last fifty years and then paint a portrait of a relation.

Teaching Outcomes
To identify fashions and style trends from various eras.
To paint a portrait of a relative as a child or young adult.

Children will:

• Identify trends and clothes from photographs of people from different eras.
• Create a portrait of a parent, grandparent or great-grandparent, based on an old photograph.

• Photos and portraits of people from different eras
• Face proportions
• Images of fashions from different eras

You do not need any particular resources for this session.

Fashions over the past 100 years – YouTube clip

Children look at how ‘doing the washing and the washing-up’ has changed over time. They study advantages and disadvantages of modern methods and make a collage picture.

Teaching Outcomes
Organise, and order chronologically, images of washing equipment.
Identify the methods used to wash clothes, dishes and people in different eras.
Create a collage using cut up images.

Children will:

• Identify methods of washing clothes, dishes and people past and present.
• Explore collage techniques and abstract art to create a collage using images of domestic technology past and present.

• Images for cutting up
• Images of washing equipment
• Examples of collage

• Paper for collage

There are no weblinks needed for this session.

Children look at differences in domestic machine technologies over time, and then invent an alarm clock for the future.

Teaching Outcomes
To investigate, and order chronologically, images of technology from different eras.
To design an alarm clock of the future.

Children will:

• Complete a detective challenge placing images and descriptions of machines in the correct order.
• Design an alarm clock of the future after exploring techniques for waking up in the past.

• Images of machines from different eras
• Alarm clocks over the past 100 years
• Images of cutting edge/possible future alarm clocks

You do not need any particular resources for this session.

There are no weblinks needed for this session.

Studying photographs of schools, classrooms and pupils from the 1940s onwards, children re-create an art lesson from the 1950s. What would granny have thought?

Teaching Outcomes
To investigate, and order chronologically, images of schools and classrooms from different eras.
To create a painting using art materials from the 1940s.

Children will:

• Explore images and accounts of school life in the past and create a timeline
• Experiment with art materials used in schools in the past

• Images of current classrooms, schools and equipment
• Images of classrooms across the 20th and 21st centuries
• Images of art lessons in the 1940s

• Powder paint
• Poor quality paper
• Glass jars and paint brushes

Children at school in the 1940s from schoolsonline.britishcouncil.org

Give children a 1950’s school day or morning! Boys and girls are segregated, they are doing different tasks and there is NO talking!

Teaching Outcomes
To talk about the key features of day-to-day life in the 1950s.
To write a piece of ‘news’ as a 1950s child.

Children will:

• Recall key features of day-to-day life in the 1950s.
• Role play a school day (or morning) as it would have been in the 1950s.
• Write a simple ‘news’ entry in role as a child of the 1950s.

• Images of school life in 1950s
• Sample diary entries from the 1950s

You do not need any particular resources for this session.

School memories from the 1950s from shirleyinfantschool.org.uk
School life in the 1950's from bbc.co.uk
BBC music and movement recording from the 1950's – YouTube clip
Bill and Ben children's programme from 1953 – YouTube clip