Medieval Gallery Visit – Museum of London

Today we visited the Museum of London, which is located at 150 London Wall, within sight of St Paul’s cathedral and in the City.

Our initial aim was to visit the Medieval London exhibit.

We took along our Fizzbook tablet PC, which allowed us to create some blog articles “in situ” using our Live Writer software and take some photographs of artefacts and exhibits with the webcam (our Fizzbook allows us to spin the webcam around so that you can see what you are photographing easily as you walk around the exhibits – cool!).

Here are some of “M” and “A” s favourite artefacts:

  

A beautiful brooch, found in the grave of a woman. It is thought that the brooch was placed in a leather bag around her neck. The brooch was decorated with garnets and gold. Lovely!

 

This was an interactive game that showed the medieval roots of common words used today, for example “sheep”.

 

This caught our eye because “M” and “A” have been researching and making their own illuminated manuscripts. Also on display were the tools that the monks would have used.

“A” enjoyed trying on a Medieval-style head-dress!

We spent some time in the Roman London Gallery, too, which had a great little model of Roman London Docklands and a re-creation of a Roman market place with background sounds of Roman London life.

One of our favourite galleries was that of The Great Fire of London in 1666. This is an area of history that we hadn’t studied before, but the children thoroughly enjoyed reading about the events and the people involved.

The Museum of London is in the process of building a new exhibition hall, due to open early 2010, so I reckon we’ll be back then!

Museum of London – The Great Fire of London

A poem by “A”, inspired by the Great Fire of London exhibit at The Museum of London and created on the museum’s magnetic wall using available word tiles:

 

A fire suddenly burned

The wind was hot

The night was red,yellow and orange

People ran

A scream

A frightened cry

Tumbling house

Blazing street

Choking

Scared

FIRE!

Bank of England Museum

Today we visited the Bank of England Museum. The Museum, on Bartholomew Lane in the City of London, has free admission. It tells the story of the Bank of England from its foundation by Royal Charter in 1694 to its role in the present-day economy.

The children and I really enjoyed the exhibits, particularly the one which demanded the use of fact-finding skills which led to the discovery of a combination which (eventually!) allowed us to open a safe!

Information points, operated by touch-screen, showed short films which explained the effects of inflation on the economy, whilst archived news footage told the story of inflation and depression.

We were interested to learn about the history of the Bank of England, from its founding fund – raised in a little under two weeks – of £1.2 million, its agreed procedures for recording and handling its funds and, particularly, why our paper money states the Chief Cashier’s “PROMISE TO PAY THE BEARER ON DEMAND THE SUM OF” … oh, and speaking of paper money, we enjoyed seeing the note for One Million Pounds!

“M” and “A” had great fun piloting a hot air balloon in a virtual inflation game, and the children enjoyed completing a quiz (available from the front desk), managing to earn a prize by the end.

And, to top it all, we had the chance to lift a real gold bar, worth over £200,000 (and, at 13kg, it wasn’t easy!).

We often hear about the Bank of England setting interest rates ,or the rise and fall of inflation, and we have often handled paper money, but haven’t considered them in detail in our learning as yet.

We found that the Bank of England Museum presented information and concepts in an interesting and compelling fashion, whilst retaining a sense of history throughout. Our visit today has motivated us to do more study and we will be requesting one of the free education packs produced by the museum!

The Bank of England Museum – time well spent!

www.bankofengland.co.uk

Visiting Ham House – National Trust

This week we have been enjoying a visit to London. We always love visiting the museums and welcome the opportunity and the challenge to live life at the pace of the city, if only for a few days!

However, we were happy to take time out for a “breather” over the weekend by making use of our National Trust cards and paying a visit to visit Ham House, which is on the banks of the River Thames at Richmond.

http://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/main/w-vh/w-visits/w-findaplace/w-hamhouse

This magnificent house, which contains treasures from all over the world, was the home of Elizabeth Murray, the Duchess of Lauderdale. The Duchess, who managed to keep Ham House safe from the “Roundheads” whilst carrying on secret correspondence with the exiled King Charles II, was a resourceful and intelligent woman, who enjoyed an extravagant lifestyle at the height of her wealth and social standing, although we learned that she seldom left Ham House during the last eight years of her life.

We enjoyed exploring the house with the family discovery map, searching out tea tables from Java, vases from China, lacquered tables from Japan, and more.

We imagined what it would have been like as a servant at Ham House, scurrying along “secret” passages and up and down cramped spiral staircases – out of sight of the family and guests, who enjoyed fabulous luxury in wonderful rooms full of beautiful things.

A’s Joke of the Day

Why do graveyards have fences around them?

Because people are dying to get in!

M’s joke of the day

Why did the banker push the lady over?

She asked him to check her balance.

Using Live Writer to Blog

Prior to this post, each article or post that we have added to our Dragontree blog has been created “live” on the internet. This has often resulted in us typing up location reports of outdoor learning opportunities such as museum visits or field work on our return to “base” (whether that be home base, the British Library or the nearest Starbucks with internet access!).

However, from today we will be able to create our blog entries from any location, whether or not it has internet access, save the article on Live writer on our laptops, then send the posts over the internet later when we manage to re-connect.

This means, of course, that we can write our blog entries “on the spot”, when our motivation and interest is at its peak and when we have greatest access to the information we might need.

That’ll be my ICT professional development for today, then!

Want to try it out? It’s free to download:http://download.live.com/writer

Henry II and Thomas a Becket

Thomas a Becket, born in London in 1118, was the son of a merchant. When working as assistant to the Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas was introduced to King Henry II. They became friends.

Henry II appointed Thomas Archbishop of Canterbury in 1162, no doubt hoping that his friend Thomas would support him in his dealings with the Church.

“A” continues our account:

Henry II tried to change the court rules in his kingdom. When he came to power, any cleric who commited a crime would go the Church court, rather than the King’s court.

In 1164, the King tried to pass a new law which made all the people – including the clerics – subject to the King’s court. This was known as “The Constitutions of Clarendon”.

Henry II expected Thomas a Becket to sign the Constitution. But he was to be both disappointed and frustrated.

“M” continues our account:

At first, Thomas agreed with Henry.

But then, the Pope told Thomas to change his mind and to serve the Church rather than his King.

So Thomas refused to sign.

The King, who was in Normandy at the time, became enraged and cried ”who will rid me of this turbulent priest?” (although many historians argue that he asked how his courtiers could “allow their lord to be treated with such shameful contempt”).Either way, four of his knights sailed to England, rushed to Canterbury Cathedral and murdered Thomas in the middle of a service.

Thomas a Becket was later made a saint.

Henry went on a pilgrimage to Thomas’s shrine at Canterbury Cathedral to show remorse. He walked barefoot, confessed his sins and was flogged by the monks.

Our Very Own Enormous Turnip!

The Dragontree vegetable garden has been a great success this year.

The highlight though was our ENORMOUS turnip… A tried, but she could not pull it up. M joined in to help but even then the turnip was not for coming out of the ground. Finally Mum had to help and with some vocal support from Ellie the dog, we pulled and pulled and pulled until the enormous turnip came free.

Hydroelectric power in the Alps

This was the our first year camping in the Alps that we had electricity…. Imagine a fan heater in your tent when it is freezing outside!  Why it took us 20 years to discover this luxury I do not know!

M had a good look round on a 9 hour walk around the valley and found where the power was actually being generated.