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Summer
10:00 - 17:00
March - October
7 Days A Week
March - October
7 Days A Week
EDUCATION SERVICES: Pre-booked Activities
Activity 1: The Forester's Cottage
Inside the reconstructed 19th century cottage students can compare life now with how it was lived in Victorian times. Hands-on activities include helping our costumed character, ‘Ma Meek’ with the laundry and other household duties. A smallholding next to the Cottage, also gives students the opportunity to meet our Gloucester Old Spot pigs and hens and, generally learn about the self-sufficiency lifestyle of the Forester.
Activity 2: Mining and Charcoal Burning
Explore the main industries of the Forest of Dean – iron and coalmining. Outside in our woodland a Free Miner’s mine or gale is concealed. Students can see how it was constructed and how a Free Miner lived. The life of the charcoal burner is also explored and a team building exercise constructs a small part of a traditional stack. This session can also include a charcoal drawing activity too.
Drawings can either be taken away for display in school or can be given to Museum staff for public display in the galleries.
Activity 3: Victorian School Room
Experience a ‘chalk and talk’ Victorian classroom lesson with our school ‘Dame’, Miss Wright.
Lesson will include, reading times tables, practicing handwriting and general Victorian knowledge. Through an ‘object lesson’ using specimen examples from the Museum’s natural history collection, nature and the natural environment can also be explored.
Activity 4: Miner Bill Nash’s gallery tour
Spend time with our Freeminer, Bill Nash and learn all about the story of the Forest’s coalmining industry. Listen to his stories and rhymes, watch the Light moor Beam engine in action and discover what’s in Bill’s ‘Tommy Bag’.
Students will have opportunities to touch and explore original objects connected to the miners’ lives and to interview and talk to a Forester historian/freeminer.