The session on authors features writers from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and includes examples of their work. Our history sessions come in several different formats, ranging from the more traditional discussions plus worksheets to active participation in role play. The value of portraits as historical evidence is discussed in all sessions. For many of our youngest visitors this will be their first experience of a gallery or museum, so we introduce, in an enjoyable manner, the purpose of museums and the need to treasure the past. By looking in detail at two or three family portraits from the seventeenth century, pupils discuss how the lives of children in the past differed from their own.
Pupils then choose one child from a portrait to draw, using fabric crayons.
Famous stories include Guy Fawkes and the Gunpowder Plot, Charles II hiding in the oak tree, Samuel Pepys and the Great Fire of London, Flora MacDonald, and Florence Nightingale. From 3 May 1999 only Florence Nightingale and Beatrix Potter will be available. Worksheets may replace the practical art work if preferred. As demand for the Tudor session is very heavy we now offer a choice of either Early Tudors or Elizabethans. Children need to have studied the main events and characters before their visit.