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Activities for Families: Children and Young People

In learning about the past it is always best to start in an environment that is familiar. All children have some understanding of the world of today, which they can use as a point of reference to compare against historical events. It is important for children to view the world in which they live as a continuation of society in the 1940s, not as completely detached from it.

The activities below will help children understand the lives of people of their own age growing up during World War Two. These activities should supplement formal education by giving a sense of what life was like in the 1940s, rather than a detailed factual knowledge of it. They are meant to be engaging - both for children and for the adults helping them - but not to appear to be part of a structured curriculum. You can do one or all of the activities, depending upon time.

Evacuation

Activity 1

Ask your child/children to look around their bedrooms and point out what they would pack in a case if they were going on holiday for the six weeks of the summer holiday. As they are doing this, discuss why they think they would need these things.

When they have finished, help your child/children to prepare another case, this time based as far as possible on what they think children might have taken with them when they were evacuated during World War Two.

Ask your child/children if they understand why there is such a difference between what they could pack today, and what the children in 1939 could take. You could go on to give them brown paper and string, and get them to attempt to pack some belongings into a parcel.

Ask your child/children whether they know anyone in the family who has stories of evacuation.

Read some of the following extracts about evacuation below, available on the Story extracts page.

• York and Canada: Memories of an Evacuee
• A Surrey Boy's War; Evacuation to South Africa
• The Atlantic Divide: Evacuated to America

You can either read these to your child/children or get them to read them in order to help with literacy skills. Remember to focus on understanding meaning rather than accuracy of reading. As you are reading discuss why different children had different views of being evacuated, why some were afraid, why some were not treated nicely when they arrived at their new homes. Also encourage your child/children to think about how they would feel in this situation.

After looking at the extracts, your child/children could imagine what they would have written home on a postcard to you, or draw or paint a picture that represents evacuation.

Bombing

Activity 2

Discuss with your child/children what would happen today if all the trains stopped running, there was no electricity, shops were destroyed, factories could not produce goods.

Ask your child/children to think about why people might want to stop all these things working during wartime.

Read the following extracts about bombing during World War Two, available on the Story extracts page.

• Collecting Shrapnel - and Bombs - in Wartime London
• Plane Crash in an Essex Cornfield
• A Night to Remember: The Coventry Blitz

You can either read these to your child/children or get them to read them in order to help with literacy skills. Remember to focus on understanding meaning rather than accuracy of reading. As you are reading, discuss what we can learn from the stories, how children who were growing up during World War Two felt about bombing, and why adults and children of the time may have had different views of it.

You could then reverse roles with your child/children. Get them to be the adult and imagine what they would say to you, the child, in order to explain why there is going to be bombing, what to do and how to cope with any subsequent devastation. The aim of this activity should be fun, do not correct the child/children as they speak - you are just trying to give them a sense of what it was like to live at a time of war.

Rationing

Activity 3

When you have a snack break with your child/children, take a Mars bar or similar chocolate bar, and cut it into very small slices 2cm (quarter of an inch) thick. Let the children eat one piece each and no more. Tell them it then has to last for another two weeks. Ask your children how they feel about this. Explain that sweets and all types of food were rationed in World War Two. Ask them to think about whether or not children in the 1940s would have felt the same as they do.

Now ask your group to read some of the following extracts about rationing in World War Two, available on the Story extracts page.

• Emergency Cream and Soya Marzipan: Christmas Cakes in 1943
• The Black Banana
• A 3-Year-Old's Recollection
• Strange Things on the Dinner Table
• The Birthday Party
• Caught: Memories of a Mars Bar
• A Child's View of War: Disney Gas Masks and Saving Sugar

Focus on understanding meaning rather than accuracy of reading. As you are reading get the child/children to make a list, draw an image, or just try to remember what ingredients were not available during wartime. You could help them with this by stopping when an unavailable ingredient is mentioned. This helps with memory and listening skills.

Once you have read the extracts, discuss with your child/children what food they could get today that they could use to attempt to recreate a child's party tea as if they were living in the 1940s. You could make an eggless sponge cake, spam sandwiches (without butter), and perhaps use up the rest of the Mars bar and make a fizzy jelly.

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