Pupils on parade at Shoreham First School in 2007. Picture: Mick Canning S45013H7Pupils on parade at Shoreham First School in 2007. Picture: Mick Canning S45013H7
Pupils on parade at Shoreham First School in 2007. Picture: Mick Canning S45013H7

Living history lesson in 2007 took Shoreham pupils back to wartime

In 2007, Shoreham First School, now known as Swiss Gardens Primary School, turned back the clock nearly 70 years to give the pupils an idea of what it was like to be a child in the Second World War. Youngsters at the school, in Victoria Road, were asked to wear clothes appropriate for the 1940s and were given the opportunity to experience what it would have been like to be their age at the start of the war in 1939.

As well as playing the part of evacuees, they were introduced to gas masks and hard hats in the living history lesson. Pupils were able to try on the hard hats and were shown a real gas mask before each child made a cardboard box to carry their pretend gas masks. Dressed in clothes of the time, they also got a taste of what it would have been like congregating in an air-raid shelter during the Blitz.

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