Apologies for the gap in our posts. Normal service has resumed.
In our January 2012 session we did a variety of World War II related activities. Sarah Phillips, Learning and Access Officer from Wessex Archaeology brought along some of the resources created by their Coastal and Marine department on World War II.
A PowerPoint presentation proved that the children knew a lot more about World War II than Sarah, and we had a great discussion session on the “Archaeology” of the war – in other words, what remains today and what stories can it tell us about the past and what it was like to live in Britain at that time.
We talked about World War II finds discovered by industries working at sea on the seafloor, such as fragments of aicraft wrecks, bullets and guns. We examined geophysical survey image of WWII wrecks on the seabed such a sunken German submarine, which is located off the South Coast of Britain. We also talked about anti-aicraft blocks, pillboxes, mulberry harbours, decoy towns, maunsell towers and lots, lots more. We nearly ran out of time for the actual activities.
The activities included dressing up in a real World War II airman’s uniform and exploring what the clothes could tell us about the experience of being in a WWII bomber plane.
We decoded enigma codes and identified the location of enemy and ally ships in an adapted version of Battleship.
Lastly we adapted domestic ships and boast for service in the navy and readied them for battle.
The day was alot of fun and this is obviously a topic that the YAC finds interesting.
Resources used on the day can be downloaded from Wessex Archaeology’s webpages.