The House, gardens, adventure playground and bird garden are an exciting environment for topics such as 'lifecycles' 'Victorian life' and 'repeating patterns'.

KS 2 Activities: House
History (Yr 5/6)
Unit 11 – What was it like for children living in Victorian Britain?
Unit 12 – How did life change in our locality in Victorian Times?
To support this unit we can provide:
• The resource of the Below Stairs exhibition with a Victorian kitchen and domestic equipment. There are costumes to try on, computer interactive workstations to play with and a small handling collection.
• A teacher-led resource packs, (available to download from bottom of the History page or contact us)
• A Learning and Access Victorian Object Handling session. See below for details.
• House guides who are child-friendly and always willing to help.

Cross-curricular links:
ICT – there are computer interactive workstations to play with in Below Stairs.
Literacy – costumes can develop role play and empathy skills.

Victorian Object Handling Session led by Learning and Access Staff
Handle actual Victorian artefacts! Dress-up as a Victorian servant!

In a one-hour session, pupils will handle objects from the Victorian period with guidance from a member of the Harewood Learning and Access team who will lead the session.

Topics covered include:
• Domestic issues (heating, lighting, washing)
• Servant life and how the lives of their employers differed
• Family (size, health care, mortality, childhood)
• Women (franchise, differing role for different classes
• Fashion and taste (costume, style)
• Industrialisation
• Empire
• Religion

Sessions can be tailored to suit the group’s level, ability and depth of study. Certain areas can be focussed on more according to the requests of the teacher.
The session will provide a springboard for a visit to Below Stairs, the State Floor and All Saint’s Church, Harewood.

The object handling may involve contact with mild detergents and other possible allergens. It is requested that the teacher inform the education staff at Harewood if any child participating in the activity may potentially be allergic to the products on display.

Maids and Mistresses

To run alongside our Maids and Mistresses trail about the women of Yorkshire’s Country Houses, the Yorkshire Country House Partnership in conjunction with the University of York and the Heritage Lottery Fund have produced a resource pack. The information in the pack can be applied to Key Stage 2 History:

“How did life change in our locality in Victorian times?”
• The different roles of women: how was life different for the Victorian Maids and Mistresses?
• Can you spot Louisa’s Victorian alterations to the house? How does her taste differ to those who came before her?
• Find the servant and family burials in the churchyard. Who lived longer?
• The agony of childbirth, and the mortality rates of mother and child.

“What was it like for children living in Victorian Britain?”
• Childhood and education for girls

“Britain since 1930”
• The role of Princess Mary as a nurse during and after the Second World War.
• The use of the house as a hospital during the Second World War.

Contact us for a Resource Pack or follow link to download the pack at the bottom of the page.

Also available Astounding Archaelogy Resource Pack - KS1 and KS2. This pack is available to download at the bottom of this page.

Encourage your pupils to look for evidence and find out about the past by following this trail around All Saints' Church in the grounds. The pack has pre, on site and post visit work and covers conservation, stratigraphy, chronology, numeracy and literacy.

All Saints' Church is managed by the Churches Conservation Trust.

The trail was written in association with Dan Eaton CE Primary School, Bradford, and his pupils and was funded by Yorkshire Museums, Libraries and Archives Council.

Numeracy Resources: House and Grounds

Numbers are beautiful! Maths is everywhere you look! From the symmetry of patterned ceilings, to clocks and weighing scales, and counting the birds in the Bird Garden as data; numbers can be found in allsorts of places.

We have recently developed cross-site Numeracy trails to support work from Reception class to Year 6. The trails give real life situations in which Maths can be used creatively to solve problems. Beginning on the State Floor looking at repeating patterns and shapes, continuing in the Below Stairs exhibition looking at Roman Numerals and weighing, and ending in the Bird Garden; the trails provide an interesting new way to look at Harewood.

Continuing the numerical theme, why not try a churchyard survey of All Saint’s Church, Harewood?

The trails are teacher-led and come with comprehensive teaching notes.

The following trails are for KS2: