World War Two Day in Year 6!

Year 6 have spent the last two days experiencing life as evacuees during World War Two! We began by filling in our name tags - in case we got lost en route - then had a think about what we would have taken with us in our (extremely!) small suitcases. We found out that all evacuees had to take gas masks with them, so we had a go at making our own. We then explored precious artefacts from the war, including adult's and children's real gas masks, an Eastbourne soldier’s dog tags and some very impressive medals won by soldiers in the war. At this point, we had built up quite an appetite and were ready for our delicious World War Two lunch, which we were horrified to find only consisted of half a marmite sandwich, a biscuit and some raisins. Thank goodness we had remembered our modern day lunches too... we were not impressed with rations! 

Katherine, from English Heritage, joined us virtually in the afternoon through a video call Q&A. We told her all about our day and she told us many stories of how the war had affected Eastbourne. We think she knows nearly as much about history as Miss Pollard! After our Q&A with Katherine, we used maps to locate where bombs had hit in Eastbourne; we were amazed to recognise many of the places! Finally, we finished our day by code breaking, which seemed like a very exciting (but difficult) role in the war.

We would like to say a huge thank you to Mrs Harman and her wonderful helpers for organising our lunch for us. Additionally, we would like to thank our families for helping get our costumes together, they really helped us get into the evacuee role!