On Monday 16th January, Year 4 visited the Science Museum too see how inventions over the years have changed the way we live. This linked with our current topic Incredible Inventions. We travelled by coach and saw Lord’s Cricket Ground and Buckingham Palace garden wall on the way, which caused some excitement!
Once at the museum, our two main focus points were Making the Modern World on the ground level, and the Secret Life of the Home in the basement. In the Secret Life of the Home children saw everyday home appliances and how they have changed over the centuries. The first thing they met on arrival was the toilet. On display were types of every design, including some beautiful pottery bowls, but of course ‘flushing the poo’, showing how the flush system works, was the highlight! Everything from cookers to hairdryers, fridges, microwaves, televisions, radios were on display. We learned how things we take for granted today, and which make our lives easier, were once not so simple. Did you know, that to watch the first televisions, the lid had a mirror to reflect the screen, which was situated on top of the unit facing the ceiling? In the 1940’s an American company used an elephant standing on its fridge to show how sturdy it was. Interesting though, as children learned in their Dig for Victory topic last year, that many British families in WWII did not own a fridge, and many had outside toilets.
On the ground floor, were the huge steam engines, which changed the course of our history. Children will be learning the impact these had and how the Industrial Revolution changed the way Britons lived. Again, we saw some of the first inventions of their type from telescopes, x-ray machines, toys, irons, cars, aeroplanes to name but a few.
We also paid a visit to the space section and saw how the pioneers of space made their journeys, how new Earth-like planets have been discovered, but that it would take 250,000 years to get to them! Wow!
The children had a great day and quite a few were out for the count on the coach journey home. Signs of a day well spent!
