A wonderful piece on school sessions by Cheryl Chung, learning placement. If you are interested to know more about our placement schemes do take a look here: https://www.fulhampalace.org/news/professional-placements-at-the-palace/.
There are various school sessions that the education centre at Fulham Palace organise. My favourite school session that I have helped with was the toy session.
At the beginning of the session, the children were already excited about the toys display that they saw. They were asked to sit on the carpet and had a lesson with the teacher. First, the teachers showed a few old toys and asked some questions, for example, what is the toy made of and is the toy fragile? This is how the teacher maintains interaction with the children.
Then, the children got the opportunity to touch and play with some old toys that they have not seen before such as the hamming top traditional spinning toy and diabolo. They liked them very much and they kept attempting to play with the old toys.
The children were also playing with toys in different eras. One of the most iconic toys was a train that was made of wood and recycled cans. The children were very creative because they invited the doll and soldier to get on the train.
Before the session ended, the children got to make their peg doll. They were very excited, ranging from choosing different clothes to drawing their own peg with different colour pens. I could feel the excitement when they completed designing their own peg, which they also shared with me. The children then brought their pegs back to school with happy faces.
I really enjoyed this session. What I found most interesting is the reactions from the children. They were very curious and active to explore more about the history of toys. It also reminds me of my childhood. Digital toys were not that popular when I was small and I enjoyed playing with the traditional toys. I really appreciate how the teacher led this session. With lots of preparation, the session went really smoothly.
