History
WW2 Evacuation to Horton Kirby!
Class 4’s Horton Kirby Adventure!
Recently, as part of our studies of WW2, Class 4 were ‘evacuated’ to Horton Kirby for the day. The children were introduced to Captain Tanner at the school. He helped the children to spot whether airplanes were friend or foe in the stormy skies; which was very useful as we had to take cover in the bomb shelter when the air-raid siren went off. Captain Tanner kept our spirits up by teaching us songs such as ‘Daisy, Daisy’ as we waited for the all-clear whistle in the dark. Eventually, the children were able to emerge safely and visit local features in the village, which showed some of the scars of WW2.
Back at Horton Kirby School, the children also learnt how to calculate the cost of items in pounds, shillings and pence; as well as have a crash-course in First-Aid. (Thankfully, this was not needed in practice as the air-raid proved to be a false alarm.) The class were able to handle some of the items and equipment used in WW2 and examine propaganda posters. There was nature study and some postcards written to be sent back home too.
It wasn’t all work and no play though. In the yard the children had some free time to skip; play hoop, marbles, quoits, jacks and hop-scotch. After hearing about the 3 planes shot down nearby and seeing the map showing where so many of the V1 rockets crashed in Kent, we wondered whether we might be just as safe at Chevening. So, the class returned home from quite the adventure.
Some of the children dressed up for the part during our adventure to Horton Kirby.
We are very grateful to Mr Lang, who provided lots of items for us to study. You can see the class wearing some in these photos; and you can read all about what we found out in our History books. Having Primary Sources of information, such as these artefacts, is really useful for our studies.
In war times we may come across propaganda. Class 4 looked at a variety of sources, such as posters, photos and newspaper accounts. We had decide what we thought might be true, what might be a one-sided account, and what was likely to be false. We also designed some examples of posters that might have been used in WW2 in Britain.
