Primary Schools

Primary Schools

Key Stage 1 and 2

Get creative with your curriculum and engage your pupils in hands-on learning with historical objects to develop their historical skills and learn about life in past.

We offer a range of museum sessions, workshops in school and topic boxes to support delivery of the National Curriculum through local history at all key stages and ages.

If you have any questions or would like to discuss the options we offer, please contact our Learning Officer, Victoria on 01992 564270, or vmitchell@efdmuseum.org.uk

Visits to the museum
Join us at the museum for a half day (2 hours) or full day (4 hours) for a guided exploration of the galleries, object handling and creative activities! Allow children to immerse themselves in history and explore the context of the topics they are studying. Thursdays are the best day for a visit as the museum is closed and our community room is available for activities and eating lunch. Do get in touch if you would like a visit another day and we will do our best to accommodate. As the museum and community room are quite small, we can only accommodate a maximum of 30 children at any one time.

Outreach visits to school
Book us to come into school with our handling collection! Choose a topic and we’ll deliver 1 hour or 2 hours of handling activities, dressing up, and creativity to immerse children in history!

WE OFFER SESSIONS ON EVERY TOPIC ON THE PRIMARY SCHOOL CURRICULUM, BUT HERE ARE SOME OF OUR STAR SESSIONS! Get in touch for information on sessions relating to other topics.

Toys in the Past, 1 hour session, in school, KS1 In this session we will handle some old toys and think about the materials they were made from, as well as comparing them to the toys we have today by thinking about some similarities and differences! We will also think about what museum’s do, where they get their objects from and what old objects can tell us about the past!

Roman bath houses in Essex, 2 hour session, KS2 (can be delivered at school or at the museum):
Learn about the Romans in Essex and particularly in the Epping Forest District, thinking about why the Romans chose to create a settlement on the River Roding and what the settlement might have looked like with artist interpretations! We know there was a fairly sizeable bath house at the Durolitum settlement (site is now situated between Chigwell and Abridge)! We will then do a series of activities with Roman handling objects to imitate how the Romans used the different rooms in the bath house, and learn about Roman hygiene. NOTE: This will not include the children changing clothes! The children will also be given characters and scenarios to stimulate bath house gossip!

If this session is delivered in school, a hall space will be preferable.

What did the Anglo-Saxon world look like? 2 or 4 hours, onsite at the museum, KS2: Waltham Abbey is the burial place of King Harold II, the last Anglo-Saxon King of England, so our museum is the perfect place to get up close and personal with the Anglo-Saxons! We will handle replica Anglo-Saxon objects and see real Anglo-Saxon coins from our museum collection! We will sketch from the objects, thinking about the patterns Anglo-Saxons used to decorate objects and what inspired them. We will then use those sketches as inspiration to block print an Anglo-Saxon shield!

Iron Age Religion in Essex, 2-hour session, KS2 (can be delivered at school or at the museum): explore Stone Age to Iron Age handling objects, see real 2,500-year-old Iron Age objects, and think about how Iron Age people would have interpreted their world, and what they would have believed in. We will also imagine what living in Essex 2,500 years ago would have been like, particularly thinking about Ambresbury banks, the Iron Age Hill Fort in the Epping Forest. We will then create from clay an object or image that is representative of ourselves, which would tell archaeologists something about us if they dug it up in 2,500 year time!

The Loughton Boys: Guided reading of Tom Palmer’s His Name is Ben book, 2 hour session, in school, Yrs 5 and 6 In this session we will learn about The Loughton Boys, who were holocaust survivors that came to live in Loughton to recuperate. Tom Palmer’s book focuses on Ben Hesgeth who became an Olympic heavy weight champion for Great Britain. We will read the (very short) book together and stop to think about how Ben was feeling and look at historical documents related to the story.

Please fill in this form if you would like to book or enquire about a session.