Final day of workshops at Wood Farm School

We were back in to Wood Farm School this morning for the last time. Last week some of the children used their map of landmarks to design a circular walk around Headington - the plan was to walk it this morning, but unfortunately the weather was against us! We did go to visit Huggins Cottage though, and then went along to Holy Trinity Church to see Kimber's grave.

When we got back to school the children shared what they had been working on with the whole of Year 4, 5, and 6! It was a much bigger audience than we had anticipated but they did really well.

I wasn't in a good position to film the performances (and one group had a lot of members away) but click on the following links to see an earlier reherasal of the play: First Half Second Half, and the group who made up a dance.

Above are the children outside Huggins Cottage; below looking at Kimber's grave in Holy Trinity Church.

A week of workshops at Windmill

We've been in Windmill School all of this week, doing workshops with a group of thirteen children from Year 4. It's been great to have so much time to work on different things, and today the children did a 20 minute performance of everything they've been doing for the rest of their classmates, and to the children from a local nursery school.

We started off the week by telling the children a little bit about William Kimber, and his life. The children all watched the Music in the Family film, and they made notes on things they found interesting. After they'd watched the film the children split in to groups, and each group then decided what they'd like to find out more about, and how they were going to present their findings at the end of the week.

One group decided to focus on the music; they spent an afternoon listening to recordings of Kimber playing Morris tunes, and picked their favourite which they then learned to play. They also researched some history around the tune, and looked up the original manuscript from the Vaughan Williams Memorial Library. Click here to watch their presentation and performance.

Another group chose to write a story about Kimber to read to the nursery children. They typed it all up and gave them a copy after the performance. They also made up a dance and drew some pictures to illustrate their story. Click here to listen to their story.

Another group decided to focus on dancing, so spent some time watching videos of different morris dance styles, and then made up a dance of their own using some of the steps they had seen in the videos. Click here to watch a video of them practising the dance!

The final group chose to make a timeline of important dates in Kimber's life - they were shocked to discover he had left school when he was nine, as that is the age that they all are at the moment. One of the children in this group was a talented artist, and she drew a large picture of Kimber. They also decided to learn a morris tune together. Click here to watch them practising.

During the week the children also did a variety of other activities, including having a mini-melodeon lesson(!) and exploring some of the Kimber landmarks in the local area.

Here we are visiting Kimber's grave (above) and outside the house he was born in (below).