Local heritage

Weaving local heritage into our outdoor activities

How can we increasingly weave local heritage into our outdoor learning activities? It could be learning about the “Lady Ebrington,” an emigrant ship that took hopeful Victorians to Australia in the mid 1800s for the Gold Rush; a strip of hedgerow in the school grounds that hints at earlier, pastoral uses for the land; a small piece of pottery dug up whilst gardening at the school; storytelling that captivates young children and passes on cultural values or learning about how the Northam Burrows played a role in wartime.

Child-led research

It can also be about child-led research - with the children recording locally used words and phrases, before these words drop from daily use; photographing examples of what the word ‘community’ means to this youngest generation, recording and preserving the personal memories of local residents on wartime gardens, Anderson shelters and self-sufficiency, to enrich learning in our new ‘Dig for Victory’ WW2 garden or deveoping our new seven generations project

Seven generations project

Children as community storytellers

A series of activities that encourage children to develop an engaging and influential voice in community storytelling and decision making.

Just added - a Google street view heritage trail activity and door knocker hunt activity

Find out more

The wool story

A project on the heritage of wool production and knitting in and around Appledore.

find out more

We need your help

In all of these ways, we can bring our local cultural and natural heritage further into the curriculum, enriching learning and connecting to real people and relatable, lived experiences that help to make the wider history curriculum come alive. This is a process that the school has always valued and employed and now, through the initiative, we can expand those opportunities, to involve more children, parents and community members in exchanging knowledge and capturing a sense of place and community.

Please help us to make learning about our heritage innovative and exciting, by getting involved in one of the following ways, many of which are possible to do remotely for now, until covid restrictions are lifted. Later on, we will include social events for volunteers.

Joining our research team, to help us to delve into local records and library resources .
Helping to make costumes
Sourcing genuine articles for handling collections
Sharing a traditional skill
Offering access to family photos, artefacts or records
Bringing into the school a collection of items that you have, that illustrates a part of our local heritage.
Sharing your own life-story.

We will be posting on this page any new topics we want to explore in the outdoor curriculum or specific heritage projects we are starting. Please do get involved if something interests you. We also welcome any ideas you have on other areas of our local history that could help to enrich learning for the children.

You can also take a look at the workshops we are developing, some of which involve elements of local or national heritage, including traditional crafts.

go to workshops

And take a look at our Greenwood project, an ambitious heritage project with multiple links to our local natural and cultural heritage, that we are currently developing into a funding bid.

Go to the greenwood project