To honour Dame Janet Stancomb-Wills, Dame Janet Primary Academy in Ramsgate held its annual Victorian Day last week.
Dame Janet was born on 25 January 1854.She became was the first woman mayor of Ramsgate, an office which she held from 1923–24, and she was also the first person to receive, in 1922, the Freedom of the Town.
She bought land for a new elementary school in Ramsgate, which was named in her honour, the Dame Janet Community Junior School. In December 2012 it was merged with the infant school next door to become Dame Janet Primary Academy.
Children across various years took part in many Victorian era activities including decorating plates with decoupage; still life drawing, Victorian handwriting practice; making silhouette portraits; drawing portraits of Dame Janet; painting with watercolours and making jack-in-the-box toys.
The children learned the rules of a Victorian classroom and learned what life was like for children in Victorian England, including the sorts of jobs young children would have.
Some classes also made thaumatropes; a Victorian toy constructed from a simple disk featuring a different picture on each side, attached to two pieces of string or a stick. When the card rotates rapidly on its axis, the two images appear to combine.
The children played some Victorian parlour games such as The Sculptor- a game where one child is the sculptor and can rearrange the limbs of the other. If the child laughs, they become the sculptor. The children also enjoyed Wink Murder and Blind Man’s Buff.
Head of School Gemma Sherwin said: ‘Victorian day has become quite the tradition. The children continue to amaze us with their determination to learn something new.’
You can find out more about Dame Janet Primary Academy at: https://www.damejanet-tkat.org/
