Year 2 visit to Macclesfield Museum

Lesson: History

Class: 2W Year: 2019 - 2020

What a lovely day we had at the Heritage Centre and Paradise Silk Mill. Despite the horrible weather, the children enjoyed taking part in three activities during the course of the day. The first was a walk down to the old mill and a tour to look at how the silkworms make silk, then how this was processed into fabric.

We also took part in a Victorian School Room experience, during which the children learnt how youngsters were expected to be 'seen and not heard', and learnt that they had to follow very strict rules for behaviour. We found out that a lot of children worked for six days a week at the mills, then went to school on Sundays which shocked quite a few of the pupils as they realised that there was little time to play once you reached the age of six!

Finally we visited 'Mrs Brown' in her kitchen and were shown the special arrangements for bathing on a Friday evening in the tin bath by the fire. We also learnt that sugar was a special treat and that most people only had one set of clothes for the week and one set for Sunday best. The children realised that if you were younger, you would use 'hand me down' clothing that might well not fit very well but people didn't have the money for more than one set of cothing as cloth was expensive to make amd buy at this time. We looked at how toys were made from recycled materials from the mills and  found out that most people's houses were very dark and usually only lit by candles! All in all we packed a lot into a very busy day.

A HUGE thankyou to the parents and grandparents who came along with us, without whom we could not have done this fantastic trip! We hope you all enjoyed it too.