Every Wednesday in August children have an opportunity to join the Art Marquee to create crafts from several historic periods and find out a little bit about how they used to live in that time. Today it was the Tudor's turn and their marvellous ruffs, you can see some pictures below. Next Wednesday kids will create a really special craft from the Roman age.
Elowyn Stevenson ran the session last week and tells us below about what they made and how the little ones got involved with the Viking world.
'On August 12th, the Art Marquee drew a steady of eager families to make Viking brooches. We used a simple but effective technique of covering cardboard circles with yarn and pressing down foil on top to make a pattern. Then, stringing colourful pieces of drinking straws between the two brooches to simulate the beads that Vikings wore.
The children learned how Vikings wore similar brooches to keep their clothes from falling down (they rarely used buttons!) and that the Vikings overwintered in Fulham in AD 879-880, according to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle.
We had 31 children and all sorts of brooch designs, including a "pretzel". Many of the kids had heard of the Vikings or had studied them at school, but most knew about them from reading books, which is always nice to hear!
It was great to have so many keen crafters and everyone went home with a piece of art and hopefully a mini local history lesson, too.'