While learning about World War Two, the Year 6 children of Garlinge Primary School and Nursery have been finding out how the people of Britain kept safe during the Blitz.
As part of their learning on air raid shelters, they had the exciting opportunity of designing and creating their own version of an Anderson Shelter during a DT project. The pupils either worked independently, in pairs or in groups when constructing their models.
Ten-year-old Josh (pictured below) said: “I wanted to make my design as authentic as possible so I ensured that my Anderson shelter was partly buried underground and I camouflaged the roof. I had great fun designing and making the shelter.”
Year 6 teacher and art and design lead, Miss Jenkins, said:“ The children were really engaged in the whole design process when researching air-raid shelters and creating their own models. The end result is fantastic with our pupils really wanting to make their shelters as realistic as possible”
Heads of School, Mr Cope and Mrs Northrop alongside the Chair of Governors, Mr Herbert, were then given the challenging task of choosing a winning model from each class.
Mr Cope said, “The children have fully immersed themselves within their topic this term and all of the children did an excellent job at designing and making their Anderson Shelters – Well done to all of the winners.”
The children may be interested to know that we had an Anderson shelter in the garden to house two families, and a Table Shelter in the dining room! As kids we also used the Anderson Shelter as a slide, after the builders left a substantial amount of building sand behind so we could land on it! The Table shelter was a big steel box, which we went into during a raid, unfortunately it didn’t save my older sister Beryl, who suffocated to death after we were bombed. My mum said later it took them 12 house to dig us out, but I don’t remember that, as I was only a tot, so probably slept through it!
That should read 12 hours of course, to dig us out! Am visually impaired so the odd error creeps in when trying to use such small Font!