Learning through Playing

Key Facts Incorporated in Exciting Stories
The first two A British Child projects cover two seminal periods in British history.

During the Elizabethan era, Britain flourished commercially, artistically and globally. The voyages of Drake, Raleigh and their contemporaries were bringing home both wealth and territories from the Americas, and beginning to shape what would become the British Empire. Some of the great stately homes of England, like Hardwick Hall and Longleat were being built, houses which you and your children can still see and visit today. Shakespeare was writing plays which still fill theatres, and the music being written by composers like Thomas Tallis and William Byrd can be found in today’s concert programmes.

Victorian times were just as – maybe even more – significant in shaping the world in which we live now. Under Victoria’s 64 year reign, Britain’s global influence reached its peak – an empire “on which the sun never set”. The townscapes that are so familiar today were largely established during her reign – many of us still live in Victorian houses. The canal and railway networks grew, roads became paved, industrial production allowed Britain to supply much of the world’s needs for manufactured goods, sailing ships gave way to steam and modern lighting and sewage made home life much more pleasant.

To understand the way we live today, it’s important to understand the way we lived then. That’s what A British Child lets today’s children explore.

In front of them was the dirtiest, scruffiest, scrawniest young boy she had ever seen. He couldn’t have been much older than Emma-Louise, but it was hard to tell under all of that dirt.