Melton Carnegie Museum

Aim:
To aquaint children with types of clothing worn in Tudor times, including styles and fabric content.

Objective:
To enable children to wear different types of reproduction Tudor clothes, noting similarities and differences.

Resources:
Range of reproduction Tudor clothes, as worn by males and females, camera and film, worksheet relating to specialised Tudor clothing terms.

Method:
Ask children to consider the type of clothes that they wear today - include thoughts on style, colour, comfort and purpose. Allow children to look at a selection of replica clothes, (scaled down to children's sizings), and invite comments based on similar criteria from children's first impressions.

Allow children to dress up in a variety of the Tudor-type costumes and again invite comments based on what they notice.

Ask the children if the experience of wearing the clothes was as they thought it would be or whether they have noticed anything unexpected - e. g. texture of fabric, time taken to dress, help needed to dress, etc. Let the children describe each others' costumes, as well as their own.

Take photographs of children in their 'Tudor' costumes (and before they have changed out of their present-day costumes) to help with their descriptive follow-up work at school. Encourage the children to take part in role-play exercises whilst dressed in their costumes to reinforce the fact that certain types of Tudor clothes were worn by certain types of people, according to their work and their role in society.

Inform the children of some the names of different parts of Tudor costume and allow them to complete a worksheet reflecting these.