Stickland’s parents were invited to “donate” items to be put on view and when Linda visited the children in January, an amazing number of artefacts had been collected for display.   Using some of these, Linda was able to demonstrate how to build up a picture of how people used to live in the past by studying the artifacts carefully.  She also went over all the necessary requirements needed to open a museum, including cataloguing, caring for artefacts and advertising.  Under her guidance the children planned their display, opening times and made advertisements to display in the school.  

Every item that was brought to school was photographed and the details carefully recorded.  The children then used books and the Internet to find out more about the items on display.  Information was typed up and labels were printed. The period chosen was 1850 – 1950 and the collection broadly fell into four categories:  

v     Items from the home,

v     Clothing  and jewellery,

v     Technical things,

v     The Wars.  

Many of the items belonged to grandparents and this sort of personal link to the past really did stimulate the children’s interest.  The museum was open for a week inside one of the classrooms, with the display area roped off  (the children’s idea) to keep it out of reach of those tempted to “touch”.  In the middle of the week parents were invited and they expressed their interest and surprise that so many interesting objects could be collected together in such a small school.  There were many volunteers to act as guides to the many visitors to the museum during the week.

There are equally exciting things planned for this term when all the children visit the Dorchester Museum for an Archaeology Day, when they will get the opportunity to take part in a “dig”, reconstruct a person from a skeleton and take rubbings from a Roman mosaic floor.  The follow up to the whole project will be video conferencing sessions between the Cluster schools, so that children can exchange ideas and information on their own museums, as well as their visits to the one in Dorchester . 

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