Aim:
To give an impression of differing forms of home-life in Tudor times.

Objective:
To show children specific aspects of home-life in Tudor times, and to enable them to compare and contrast this with their own home-life.

Resources:
Replica artefacts, including tableware, lighting implements, coins and pictures of contrasting housing styles.

Method:
Ask children about different housing styles used in the present day and which type of people live in them.

Relate this knowledge to housing in Tudor times. Tell children that peasants' homes only had one or two rooms with sometimes a loft above made by laying boards across rafters. The walls were usually made with 'wattle and daub' and the roof from straw.

Contrast these houses with those built in Elizabeth I's reign for much richer people - using red bricks, having tiled roofs and stone floors covered with rushes, many rooms and tall chimneys. (Show children pictures of different Tudor housing styles which can be coloured at end or after the lesson.)

Compare different furniture in varying kinds of Tudor homes e.g. straw/feather beds, few chairs, especially those with arms - stools and benches were more widely-used. (Allow children to compare sitting on a modern-day stool, chair without arms and chair with arms and note their comments regarding comfort levels.)

Compare varying pewter, ceramic and wooden tableware with modern-day tableware. (Lay a table with some Tudor style tableware.)

Discuss Tudor standards of hygiene with those of the present day and the personal effects of that hygiene. (Include very infrequent practice of washing people or clothes, using a basic toilet or otherwise, dirty state of streets from human and animal excrement, animal carcasses, etc.)

Examine replica coins from Tudor times and compare size, colour and terminology with present-day currency. (Encourage children to make a 'pocket' - small drawstring bag which people may have been used in Tudor times to keep money on their person.)