Today we were visited by Dean Bowen from Homefront Histories. He had organised a whole day for us to learn about the Homefront during World War 2 and experience what it might have been like to live in that time. We were Privates in his army and we were told that we needed to complete his mission for the day.
We spent the day working at different tables, looking at original artifacts from the 1940s including lots of weapons, armour, gas masks and even food tins and soap powder boxes. As we were doing this, we were answering various questions about The Blitz, Weaponary, Rations and more.
We got to dress up in original military jackets, hats and helmets and the best part was that we got to hold real, original guns which were deactivated. We each had our photo taken beside Winston Churchill.
In the afternoon we went outside to practice extinguishing an incendiary bomb. We had to pump the water and use the hose to put the bomb out. We were then given the chance to sound the air raid siren which was very noisy so we knew that it was definitely loud enough for small villages to hear back in war times.
We had a fantastic day learning about lots of different aspects of the Homefront and were delighted to be able to see and touch real World War 2 artifacts up close. As this was our introduction to our new Social Studies topic, we are very excited to learn even more about the Homefront.